Hi, I have been making french press coffee for the last 2 years. Recently got my hands on Aero press. Now planning to get Gaggia Classic Pro Evo (metal series).
As of now I have a hand grinder (burr) and have option to procure pre grounded coffee from local roaster.
Just wanted to know your thoughts. Which was your first espresso machine? How was your experience? What’s few things I should look out for as a beginner? What’s your favourite recipe?
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!
What grinder do you have?
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.
You will need a far better grinder.
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.
A gaggia seems nice and you can upgrade it later with https://gaggiuino.github.io
Bookmarked. I will try to use the machine as is , while I save up some money and muster up courage and time to get this done.
Yeah. I would take my time too. It will take time to get good with the machine anyway.
I would also take my time if I modified one, I wouldn’t want to hurt myself or ruin the machine.
The EVO has a teflon coated aluminium boiler. This should prevent pitting and corrosion in theory, and with no abrasive action on the teflon should theoretically last a long time. The use of descalers should be checked for the effect on the teflon coating of the boiler. The non-chromed group seems like a minor improvement. I think this is a good choice for a keen espresso starter, but I would look for a decent grinder too.
Any suggestions for a grinder on budget? How’s Gaggia MD15?
I don’t think I’d recommend that machine. Simply because it’s not a portafilter.
In these automatic machines coffee grounds get stuck in all sorts of nooks and crannies.
In my experience people don’t run the daily cleaning program nor the weekly one. And even you do, some coffee grounds stay behind so you always have old coffee grounds in the path, affecting the taste of your coffee.I looked at the Accademia series. Completely different beast.
The Classic Pro Evo looks like a nice little beginner’s machine. Not too dissimilar to my first machine, a Rancilio Silvia.
I think you may be mistaken. The Evo is simply the latest model of the Gaggia Classic Pro. It is a portafilter espresso machine. It is semi automatic in the sense that it has a pump and a boiler, but is not automatic in the sense that it has an integrated grinder and does the whole process for you.
Oh, you’re right, I looked at a completely different machine.
Not too dissimilar to my first machine, a Rancilio Silvia.
What’s your personal favourite recipe?
That strongly depends on the coffee. For the Silvia the community recommends temperature surfing, meaning to release enough water through the brew head to trigger a heating cycle.
Then you’d brew your coffee when it just finished heating. This way you get a relatively predictable brewing temperature and heat curve, despite having no PID.
I figure the same might be advisable for other small machines without PID, like the Gaggia.Beyond that you’ll just have to play with your parameters (amount, grind size, packing pressure, brewing duration) and possibly compensate for environmental variables (temperature, humidity, age of coffee) and find a configuration that produces coffee you like.
Figuring that out it’s half the fun.
I’m not sure what your budget is but sometimes the extra money over the period of two to three years doesn’t seem so bad. Apparently you have to shim the MD15 to grind finely enough, it suggests that you might over time want something a little better, but otherwise it’s a reasonably cheap starter burr grinder. There is a noisy grinder which been be bought cheaply which did a pretty good job, the Iberital MC2, but on the whole, a good grinder is going to set you back as much as the EVO. It could well be worth looking for second hand equipment, as this is usually available when people upgrade. I have a Eureka Mingon and I find it to be very good. The only drawback of the mignon is that it’s not easy to switch back and forth to different grind settings (for two sets of beans) but it is possible. It would probably be at least double the cost of the MD15, but see if you can get any deals. If you get the crono, which is probably the cheapest mignon, you would also want the espresso burr set to switch out, which is not that expensive and will grind as fine as you need.
