this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Coffee
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Espresso is a big learning curve, especially if you want to get good at milk steaming, but the end result is fantastic once you get the hang of it.
I bought the 2019 model of the Gaggia Classic Pro earlier this year and really love it. I have a lot of prior experience as I was a manager and barista in a specialty coffee shop for a while, so that definitely expedited the process of learning how to get great results out of the machine. You may not have that experience to go off of, but there are a ton of great resources online for learning.
What grinder do you have? There's a good chance you're grinder may not grind fine enough or consistently enough for espresso. The one thing a lot of beginners underestimate when getting started is how important it is to have a good electric burr grinder that's made to handle grinding for espresso. Those can cost a lot of money and generally run $300+ for entry level espresso grinding. All that said, for just getting started, I think it's totally fine to have your local coffee shop grind your coffee for espresso while you start learning the process.
I'm not sure how the Evo comes set up, but the older model was not set up for espresso enthusiasts but rather consumers who aren't looking to get too deep into it. As a result there were a couple upgrades that I found necessary out of the box; namely the tamper was just a piece of plastic, the portafilter came set up as a pressurized portafilter so I had to remove that piece of it, and the machine was set to 15 bar pressure so I had to switch out the OPV spring to get 9 bars. The Evo machine comes set at 9 bars out of the box so you won't have to worry about that. I'm not sure about the tamper/portafilter situation though.
Espresso is a blast one you get the feel for it! Let me know if you have any other questions, I'm happy to help!
I have a hand grinder similar to this one: https://amzn.eu/d/5TL8Yck
Tamper is a piece of plastic. I plan to poke some accupunture needles into a cork to DIY a WDT. And plan to get a generic steel tamper without any fancy spring loaded ones.
For the portafilter , i think it comes with 3 baskets. Pressurised, non-presurrized single dose and non pressurized double dose.
I am not sure if Evo comes at 9 bar pressure spring. I will confirm with the vendor once.
What's your recipe for espresso?
What grinder do you use?
Do you think Gaggia MD15 is any good ?
The thing holding you back, outside of learning and practice, is your grinder. It won't work for espresso, as there isn't enough granularity in the settings.
You mentioned pre-ground coffee from a local roaster, but that also won't really work unless you're using pressurised baskets.
I would get a new grinder. If you can't afford something too expensive and want to stick to hand grinding at the moment, have a look at something like the Kingrinder K4 or K6.
Here's a good guide to get you started: https://espressoaf.com/guides/beginner
As others have said, there'll be a learning curve and it may take a while until you're happy with the results. But you've picked a great machine to start. Unfortunately it's only one part of the whole thing haha.
If you wanna achieve 9 bars of pressure with a constant coffee beans amount and varying beans type (medium roast, dark roast, different varieties within the same brand, etc) you will need to finetune the grind size setting quite a lot. Even tiny grind size differences have a big influence on your brew.
You will need a far better grinder.