Hello. I have a 3 month old Gaggia Classic. It was working great. Then we left it on for an hour to an hour and a half by accident (or this may not be related to that at all), and now massive amounts of steam come out of the group head before water does. There used to be pretty much zero steam from the group head. Also, the water seems to come out faster/harder than before, making it harder to pull good/consistent shots - we're having to grind the espresso noticeably finer than before to slow it down.

I can make water or steam normally via the steam wand.

So far:

* Ensured the steam switch wasn't enabled
* Ensured the intake hose(s) aren't blocked or stuck to the sides of the water tank
* I've plugged it into a GFI - no apparent short
* Cleaned the screen
* Descaled the machine

I'm getting a metric hex wrench to unscrew and clean the group head to ensure there's no blockage there. I'll also try to get a better read on the water temp coming out once it actually stops steaming.

Any other ideas? I'm not up to cracking it open since it's still under warranty, though sending it to NY for warranty work sounds awful, mostly because we'll be without a machine for 4-6 weeks (I'm guessing) once shipping time is included!

I'm fearing some major blockage inside, or a crack, or, perhaps most likely, a bad brew thermostat?

Ok. Did the cleaning. Opened up the top and made sure all the wire connections were solid (one to the power plug inside was actually a tiny bit loose) - unplugged, of course.

And now it seems to work. Strange. I didn't actually SEE any issues, nor was the assembly all that dirty. It's a mystery. But now I'll definitely be unscrewing and cleaning it more often than every 3 months.

My guess is that things cooled off a bit while you were checking. Did you try repriming it? If I remember correctly you do so by drawing water through the steam wand.

I may have missed a post but did vitocorleone find a solution to the steam around group head issue? I am experiencing the exact same problem from a 6 month old Gaggia Classic. I have removed the shower disk and clean and now I am thinking it is the filterholder gasket. It sometimes steams THROUGH the group head during extraction so I am wondering if it is thermostat issue and thus water that is too hot.