Had my MCL for three days now. A pound of coffee and 35 grind/dose/tamp combinations later, I'm not convinced I'm getting a good shot. And there is relatively no crema. So sad.

Can someone please get me started with their favorite combo?

Grind:
I have a Rancilio Rocky doserless. I know it is flat burrs (read all about that). I know it is not step-less (read about how to and am planning to trick it out to be a step-less). I know there are better grinders (search for Mazzer Mini in this forum and you'll get the phonebook). But come on, this grinder is worthless? I recently took it apart to clean and re-calibrated the "zero" on the dial. What is a good grind setting on the Rocky for starting point I should use?

Dose:
Using the double filter basket, I'm using not quite three table spoons. 1 tb spoon = 5 grams x 2.8 = just short of 15 grams. What is a good dose amount I should use as a starting point?

Tamp:
Like an would-be espresso snob, I bought one of those auto-click tampers I can set to any weight. I've got it set to 14kg = roughly 30lbs. Is this OK? More or less.

Coffee:
I'm using the Starbucks Espresso blend. Now come on, don't be a SB hater. I lived in Seattle in the early 90s and was drinking shots in the Pike Place market location (their first) long before the rest of the world even heard of StarB. I've got a hook-up at the store and get the freshest beans. And I like the shiney darkness of the beans. And I think Illy tastes awful.

Any favorite combos?

I'm sorry, but it's the beans. You won't get good crema out of stale coffee. Watch, everyone else is going to say the same thing. It's the beans. Rule of 15s blah blah blah. Would you try fresh beans and see if that would make a difference? I'm no expert but I've experienced this before.

Also, shiny dark beans=over roasted, way past italian/Vienna roast. If you're going to spend a ton of money on espresso stuff, why not spend money on the beans? Read up on the 4Ms in order to produce good espresso.

Also, look at the list of favorite roasters thread.

Surely... will do.

What/where are the "4Ms"? and the Rule of 15s..?

http://www.home-barista.com/espresso-guide.html

and

Lesser evil - pods or preground coffee?

Babbie's Rule of Espresso Fifteens:
Fifteen Months for Greens
Fifteen Days for Roasted
Fifteen Minutes for Ground
Fifteen Seconds for Extracted

Get some good beans, set your click-0-tamp to zero, recalibrate your spoon...

Hey doug, what'd you mean by "recalibrate your spoon?"


Thanks

Allon - awesome. thanks.

orphanespresso - that makes no sense to me. but thanks.

Grant, Doug meant to take the click thing out of your tamp because the tamp weight of 30lbs does not matter at all. There are basically two sides here, one where they believe in tamping 30lbs and the other, where they only use the tamper to smooth the top of the puck and make it leveled.

Once, while wiling away some time in the grocery surreptitiously changing around the labels on the flavored coffee bean bins we observed that 9 out of 10 big bin bean buyers prefer dark greasy beans. also, it is a known fact that the most popular beer in America is Bud Light...you could look it up. my spoon holds 7 grams, and 30 pounds tamp on a lever machine is about 29 too many,IMHO.