The rocky is perfectly capable for espresso. You have every chance of making good shots with that combination of machines, as thousands of people all over the world do every day Your description sounds like old/badly roasted coffee, perhaps try an internet source? In the meantime grind finer, but st...

ummm... no but I assumed by "plating made of stanless steel" he meant surfaces/outside of machine, for which a small squib on a cloth is absolutely fine. i obviously don't use WD40 on the innards and coffee-contact surfaces EDIT - modified the first post to make it more clear

I don't know if you have access to WD40 (see here {link}) or an equivelant but it is absolutely brilliant for cleaning stainless steel, I clean all our non-food-contact SS surfaces with it

sorry to ask a daft question so late in the discussion, but your tamper is a perfect fit for the basket isn't it?

And it's exactly this point that people seem repeatedly to either miss completely or misunderstand, and is the reason why you don't see the world champions using it!

dsc, I was asking just to see if you were close enough for me to offer some practical help, but obviously not

give the Premium Espresso Blend from HasBean a go, it's a very forgiving blend (at least in my hands) and it's one I always fall back on. whereabouts in the UK are you?

hi dsc, Dan's right, time to take a step back, put the gadgets away and come back to it tomorrow. The most likely problem is the human-side of the operation , as side-channeling is a distribution/coffee issue, water taking the 'easiest' path through the puck, as illustrated by your puck-holes. I thi...

Yeah I agree with that, I've gone through som crazy rituals myself in the past, most of which as you say were pointless/detrimental. I can only talk from my own experience, which as a "home-barista" is only a year or so, but in back-to-back shots with/without WDT or equivalant on my setup the result...

Yes, but a professional would presumably have a good enough grinder not to need the WDT wouldn't they? It's not about fetishising it at all, it's about overcoming a flaw in a grinder. We can't all afford top-of-the-line