Hello everybody!

I am a new home barista wannabe and I have just bought a Gaggia Classic which I am already loving. I dont have access to a decent grinder so for now I am using Illy pods and a portafilter adapter.

However, I have a few questions and I would appreciate any tips you might have for me.

1. if I let the water flow 30-35sec through this Illy pod, I do get around 30 ml (1 oz) coffee but it seems to taste a bit "watery"... what could be causing this? should I shorten the time?

2. I have a sort of an attachment for steaming milk called a turbo frother... cant seem to get decent results (whirlpool) with it. I use cold milk but nothing... all I create is foam

3. my routine - I start the machine, in a few minutes the second amber light lights up. I press the switch and let some of the water run out to warm the portafilter. Then I put the pod in, make an espresso, throw the pod away and let some more water out to clean the grouphead.

switch on the steam switch, wait for the second light to light up again and make my steamed milk.
After that I put the steam switch back, wait a little before making a second espresso.
Is this fine or am I doing something wrong?

Cheers all and hope to hang out here with you
Alex

Hmm, I don't know about pods, as I've never used them. You probably already know though that a grinder will seriously step up your espresso.

Second of all, ditch the 'turbo frother', it's utterly useless! I found many tips saying that the best way to steam on this machine is to start steaming just before the light goes on. That way you trick the machine into thinking it still needs to keep the heat on, which enables you to steam for a pretty reasonable amount of time. I thouroughly recommend that you upgrade your steam tip to a Rancilio Silvia one (you'll find good tutorials via google), it'll make a good difference and is pretty cheap too.

You'll probably pick up some good technique with practice. For me it worked pretty well to keep the tip near the surface, without making bubbles, up to 100°F(~40°C), and then attempt to swirl the milk by putting the tip lower into the milk and find a position where the milk will start swirling up to ~140°F(~60°C). But... I'm no expert, and I'm sure you can find some videos or better descriptions than mine

Regarding the second espresso, I'd recommend flushing some amount of water and finding the point where the water is of reasonable temperature. You'll find that the machine is too hot if water coming out of the group head is still gushing out and boiling. You could do a little measuring and timing to find something reasonable. All in all, the light is pretty misleading and doesn't really give anything else than an approximate on when the machine is ready. You might want to check out temp surfing at some later point.

But mainly have fun and enjoy! Hope this helped

p.s. I don't know if starting steaming before the light goes on can damage your machine (I seriously doubt it though, under normal use and conditions), so of course you do it at your own risk. Someone else might be able to shed some light on the risks of doing that.

Heyy! Thanx for a quick and helpful reply will do some more "youtubing" on the frothing subject

Second everything mentioned above. I used (and occasionally still use) a Gaggia Evolution for years and it was a very capable machine to learn on as long as you are not doing more then one milk based drink at a time. After making the Silvia wand mod, it is even more important to start steaming just before the light comes on. The larger hole in the Silvia wand dissipates steam faster and you will quickly run out if the heat element has shut off.

Hello, once again!

It has now been a few weeks into my exciting coffee journey with the Gaggia and I have some impressions, as well as some new problems.

1. I have been pouring spring water ("Evian" sort of type), brewing Illy pods
2. no grinder yet, one retired-cafe burr-grinder on its way
3. I have bought a real stainless steal milk pitcher to do lattes and cappuccinos
4. I am going to buy a Silvia steam wand next week
no other modifications so far

Firstly - the coffee I get from it is... nice. Its not great but it is nice. I even believe it is better than what i get at the most of the cafes in Zagreb. What I have learned is, I'm going to have problems with stabilizing temperature. I did some surfing and found out that it might be good to install a PID kit.

Since I'm quite far from the States, could anyone give me a "generic" description and specifications of parts needed so I can scout them at our local electric.-shop? Like "you need the relay of this-and-this voltage, display of..." well, you get the picture.

Secondly, I suck at frothing milk. It may be the fact that I have to use turbo frother attachment as the wand is too short without it but I just cant seem to steam milk decently . I guess I just have to kepp at it. I just dont know if I should keep this attachment in the middle od near the edge of the pitcher

What order of modifications would you recommend? Grinder, naked portafilter, PID...something else?

Thank you all for the help you gave me so far!
Cheers
Alex

Grinder first! And fresh beans, no more than 14 days post-roast. You will see tremendous improvement. I like using a naked portafilter...still like watching the pours. Your SO will think you are an idiot though!

The Silvia wand will help a lot. Practice is the key. I still am not good as I don't do it enough. Try the dishsoap practicing trick:

Learning latte art with steamed soapy water [video]

Hello everybody!

I will take the liberty to present my progress through this wonderful new hobby I recently undertook, I hope no one will mind and consider this spam.

Few weeks ago I bought me a new Gaggia Classic espresso machine. Not having a grinder to go with it, I decided to use Illy espresso PODs. It worked sort of OK, I was getting about 30ml of espresso in around 30 sec, the pour was good, but I really wanted to have a go at going "full monty". Besides, Just a few blocks away from me a cafe is owned by one of the Europe's greatest baristas - Nik Orosi. He scouts his own coffee, buys it raw and roasts it... I wanted to use that in my machine.

So, a friend of mine let me a 20 year old Bergant EB (which I later found out was a generic Pavoni Zip) which was cleaned those same 20 years ago. I disassembled what I could, washed all the parts, vacuum cleaned the rest and put it back together.

I bought 200g of some cheap arabica/robusta mixture, just to get my grinding sorted out and 200g of the coffee this champ makes. The first problem I ran into is of course, grinding. For home use, one or two espressos a day, I think that big commercial grinders are really a pain in the... well. You need to grind only a small amount of coffee and you need to clean up a lot. Wasting a lot of ground coffee in the process.

(to be continued in the next reply)

hmmm... image wouldnt show for some reason even though I resized as per instructions

OK, the second problem I ran into was how fine to grind. As i took the metal ring off (to clean the grinder) it wouldnt end its rotation at 0 when I put it back. So I simply rotated all the way and then backed off one degree or so.

That proved to be WAY too coarse. 5sec and the 1oz shot was done . Horror... i thought I'd never nail the technique of making an espresso.... So I cleaned the grinder completely (used the vacuum cleaner again), and ground some more, tightening the ring a bit. Same story all over again.

I finally decided to go radical - I tightened all the way and backed off just a bit, like one click maybe. Now we'were getting somewhere. 15 to 20 sec. for a 1oz shot.

in the picture below - at 5 or even before that, the burrs of the rotor are grinding against the lower side of the metal ring)

The saga continues.... a few more things that made me feel somewhat miserable in the beginning - Dosing and tamping. The grinder has a doser built in but since its not full with coffee I can't always dose as i should. Sometimes pulling the lever has absolutely no effect and sometimes it really "hits hard". Also, it tends to dose toward the left side of the portafilter.

I had no idea how much of the grounds I need so I decided to use the plastic dosing spoon that I got with my Gaggia. That pushed things forward a bit. The second problem was tamping. I have no access to a regular tamper so was forced to use the el cheapo tamper that also came with my espresso machine.



You can imagine how that went. It's too small for my portafilter, it doesn't make the coffee "stay" glued to the baskes so it all fell out of it when I turned it downwards to check if it was tamped right... Also, I don't understand how can one tamp into a single basket? It is sort of conical (if you look at is from the side)... is that normal?

(photo)

If the grinder is that old, it probably needs new burrs. Trying to get a decent result with worn out burrs will be very frustrating for you. I'm not sure how easy it is to find replacement burrs for this particular grinder, but I suspect it's not that hard or expensive and it will be worth every penny.

Also, don't waste your time with cheap coffee, other than maybe to get in the general ballpark of where the grinder needs to be set. Once you get good fresh beans, you'll need to reset your grinder anyway, so you might as well start with the good stuff.

Anyway, looks like you've got a good setup. Good luck with getting everything dialed in, and let us know how it goes.