I'll assume money is tight if you are getting your beans pre ground.

My grinder just took a crap on me the other day so I got a manual grinder off of Amazon for $23 and it works beautifully for the price. Javapresse makes it. You'll be much more satisfied with your espresso if you get one. It takes a couple minutes to grind 15 grams.

I can easily choke my machine with this little grinder. It claims to grind down to Turkish coffee levels.

Looks like clone of porlex, hario etc. Yeah, those toys can indeed grind something like turkish, just that you need about 15 min for 1 cup ...

mazur wrote:I'll assume money is tight

If you save up a bit, you can purchase an OE Lido hand grinder for less than $200 that throws punches against the large grinders seen in commercial enterprises in quality of the grind. I use a Lido E for my Pavoni and Elektra MCAL, and has worked like a charm for over a year now. Some say the adjustment screw is a pain to use but I find it perfectly ok after some practice. I even use it for other brews like Siphon, though you must remember the grind setting used for your particular roast/tuning.

Hi,

Confirming all of the above: get a grinder, grind fine (like very fine), only use very fresh beans.

And then my personal situation / experience with a brand new Pavoni LP.

I needed a grinder too but didn't want to throw 200-300€ in it right away. So instead I got a Hario Skerton + a precision scale off of Amazon for around 50€ or so.

After adjusting and "calibrating" the burrs I can get something like turkish grind out of the Hario. I also made it stepless with a good old M8 nylok nut, for finer adjustments. Working pretty well!

Now my problem is tuning all the various factors and always find time to go get fresh coffee from the local roaster here.

Good luck and don't give up