Jason11

Agreed, I love both of mine [emoji23]

Lighter roasts generally need a finer grind than darker roasts [emoji1303]

[emoji3516] Hairy_Hogg posted this on 17/01

That last sentence made me chuckle [emoji23]

I can relate to this. When I first started making espresso with my GC (only a couple of months ago) I couldn’t work out whether the shots were sour, bitter or I was just not used to the powerful flavours of an espresso. I ended up going to a local coffee roaster which had a cafe too and got an espresso made by them and bought the same beans so I could try and replicate it at home to some extent. I concluded that what I thought the ‘sweet’ spot of an espresso would taste like was not really what I would call sweet.

Not coffee related, except for the fact that cyclists love coffee and cake !

I found this useful. It’s from the Barista Hustle website. My take from it is it’s better to tamp too hard than too soft. It’s what I do now and my shot consistency is a lot better.

Try 100% dark chocolate and you may change that opinion [emoji23]

Cheers [emoji1303] So around 7 minutes between shots. Did the shots taste the same ?

You’ve got me thinking mate, I may have to go to Costa now instead of coming round for that Latte [emoji23]

Hopefully someone can post some real world ‘between shot’ times of a PID’d Gaggia Classic as I’d be interested to know myself.

If you do go the used Gaggia route definitely try and get one with PID fitted or fit one yourself, they really do make a massive difference to the consistency of shots [emoji1303]

I’ve not tried on mine TBH. I’ve read anywhere between 5 minutes and 15-20 minutes between pulling espresso shots to stabilise the temperature again, this doesn’t take the milk steaming into the equation though.

This [emoji3516]

I’ve got a pre-2015 Gaggia classic and love it. It’s great for making single drinks but it won’t make two double shot lattes without giving it time to reheat and stabilise between shots. I guess for the £1000 budget you could buy two used Gaggia classics with PID kits and a niche zero for making two lattes at the same time though [emoji1303]