I just got a Gaggia New Baby Twin, and I'm getting poor extractions. I am using a Gaggia MDF and Baratza Virtuoso grinders. Beans are from Starbucks (yes, I know they suck) and Caribou; 1-2 weeks old. Tamp @ 30 pounds.

At my usual grind setting (14 on Baratza, 5 on MDF), the Baby won't start to pour until after about 10 seconds, never develops crema, and produces barely any espresso at all. As I increase the coarseness of grind, the extraction begins quicker and continues longer, but gives little to no crema and is still low quantity. It is a very weak drip from the portafilter; not really a pour. Puck is very wet after pulling shots. Espresso starts dark and thick and becomes watery at the end. With the most restricted pulls, the espresso that drips out is not very hot. On less restricted pulls, espresso is hotter.

Does this sound like the pump pressure is too low? Many thanks in advance for your expert advice!

p.s. Steamer seems to be rather wet, and hot water feature spits a lot of steam. This is a dual-boiler machine, of course.

I was using this coffee for testing purposes; not concerned with taste. I previously owned various machines that had pressurized filter baskets, so "crema" was not an issue. I got tired of pulling shots that were only decent enough for lattes, so I stepped up to the Baby. What really has me stumped is how weak the flow is, and what little volume it produces for such a coarse grind. My dose is at maximum without smashing into the shower screen.

First OP, glad to hear you took the plunge into some decent coffee gear. I bet you will have many years of fun (at least until upgrade-itus hits) with those tools. Welcome to the club!

Let me simplify this, having had lots of experience with all of the products (machines and coffee) you are attempting you use.

Starbucks and Caribou coffee suck for making 'espresso'. Your problems are completely caused by poor coffee. Period.

Get new coffee... then play with grind and dose and everything else. No doubt in my mind, having had same issues many a year ago.

On the positive side, you have prolly gotten a lot of good practice at dosing and leveling and tamping as you work through the crap beans. You will be so relieved when switching to freshly roasted, quality coffee. See HB's post above post for how to find it, he def won't steer you wrong.

"Testing purposes" is when you need to start with known-good coffee, and lots of it. It doesn't need to be boutique coffee, just coffee that is reliably fresh, consistent, and known to produce drinkable shots. (It doesn't even need to be especially good, just consistent and not especially bad.) I used to use the espresso roast from CCM Coffee for machine calibration because it was adequate and very inexpensive, but they no longer ship to my part of the world and so I do not know if they remain as consistently adequate.

Once you have that, follow any of the tutorials available across the web (including this forum) on dialing in a new machine, but keep a few things in mind. First, the MDF grinder has relatively wide steps between grind levels. This means that your final microadjusting will likely be in dosing and tamping, not grinding. Second, you can eliminate tamp as a variable by pretty much not doing it. Fill the basket with no extra compaction, level with a finger, and then tamp just enough to get the coffee even and below the level of the showerhead. (Later, when everything else is working, you can play with tamping, but for debugging purposes just go with the light leveling tamp to keep it from being a major variable.) Third, some Gaggias have shipped with weak pumps. I have two Gaggias in my closet, one has a far weaker pump than the other. For debugging purposes, do a search for "water debit".

It sounds to me that you have too much coffee, ground too fine and/or tamped too hard, for what the pump can take.

Many thanks to all of you for taking the time to help. I read the posts about getting good beans, and I ordered a pound of Daterra from Caffe Fresco. Still, I couldn't get past the weak pour so I called Gaggia's US distributor, and they think that the pressure may be low due to a clogged 3-way solenoid valve. Anyway, I'm going to give it a try tonight; I'll post the results.

As an aside, I would just like to say that my decision to upgrade to a "real" machine was well worth the expense. Even though I'm not getting good shots yet, the difference from the pressurized filter is astounding. No matter what I did with my other machines, the shots were never good enough to drink solo. The regular filters are producing flavors that I never imagined could exist! Why do people buy the swill that is being served at coffee house chains, and why can't they make decent espresso with their $3000 machines?!

Drew, how can you test something that is made to be tasted and not worry about the taste? I suspect you will do much better with the Caffe Fresco.

Drew,
I have a Gaggia Baby Twin I got from WLL in early June along with an MDF grinder. I have used espresso beans from Paradise, PT's and am currently using Redline Decaf and Spice Island from Metropolis. Oh, and I used some Malabar Gold from WLL that was terrific and gave abundant crema. Have used some home roasted stuff as well (I'm just beginning that adventure). On all of these I get very nice crema and about a 25 second pour with a 4 setting on my MDF and I'm guessing about a 20 pound tamp. Occasionally the 4 setting seems to result in the kind of result you are seeing - a slow pour - then I go to a 5 and use a 30 pound tamp. I think this happens when the beans start getting stale - I'm not sure why it happens but it does. It helps if I do a warm up shot - without any coffee to heat up the porta filter and maybe cool down the machine.
That's been my experience anyway.
DickC