Just spent a couple of hours faffing with Coffee making kit... a friend decided to get himself an espresso machine, something that he could control and tweak... asked my advice while down the pub and off the top of my head told him to keep an eye on ebay for a decent used Gaggia Classic and a Burr Grinder... Last night he rang me and said "I've just had a Gaggia Classic and a Cuisinart Burr Grinder arrive from ebay a couple of days ago, and I'm at my wits end - can't get a decent drink out of the buggers - thinking I aught to have just got a Nespresso and saved the faff". So, I offered to come over and have a look at what he was doing.
Well - first problem was the grinder. It's okay, a bit "fast running" motor-wise - but even though it was a flat-burr grinder, it simply wouldn't adjust down much past a "drip coffee" grind. 5 minutes of googling though had the answer...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Hacking-the-Cuisinart-SupremeGrind-for-Espresso/
And, then, looking at the actual Gaggia, he'd bought one of the post-2015 machines - I only realised when I asked him where the silver pipe was that's normally in front of the water tank... He said "there isn't one"... At which point I decided to open the lid and have a look - yep - it's the stainless steel boiler one - i.e. the dumbed down one with the power saving gubbins etc... While I'm thinking about that he hands me a replacement steam wand (the Rancilio one) and says "I was going to fit one of these as well - everyone says that the original one is crap... but I can't see how it bolts in..."
At this point I sort of reconciled myself to a bit of workshop time. Piled all his kit into the car, and took it home with me. I've spent most of the afternoon faffing - the Grinder was a simple fix...
It's now grinding pretty much perfectly (as much as a high-speed mill CAN at least) - it's producing spot-on espresso grind from my current decaf. beans on #3 for their machine (so there's 2 finer settings available - #1 is pretty much "turkish ibrik" - in fact I think it's finer than my "rocky" goes, #2 works better in my machine as it's a semi-commercial kit and has a bit more "oomph", and #4 and #5 I'd say would be good for oilier beans and the "full-caff" beans. then there's #6-#10 which range from Moka-Pots through to an Aeropress, #11's spot on with a cafetiere (french press) and #12-15 makes assorted sized rubble that will be fine in filter machines...
I've made (and tasted, then thrown out) about a dozen cups of coffee so far - think I've had a "nett three espressos" worth - but as I've been working with a bag of (relatively cheap, commercial cafe type) decaf. beans I'm not buzzing in the slightest...
Amazing the difference that a bit of fine tuning can make to a coffee-grinder. All told it took 10 layers of Self Adhesive Aluminium tape fastened to the back of the grinding burr as a "shim" to tighten the tolerance up to an acceptable degree... I'm pretty sure that it's all down to manufacturing tolerances, and wear on the tooling parts as they go through production runs - plus the manufacturer erring on the side of caution in not getting the burrs "too tight" so that they clash.
I simply cleaned the machine thoroughly, then set it to it's finest setting, and used a set of "feeler gauges" - the things you use to set spark plug gaps - to see what the gap was between the two burrs. Tape was labelled 40micron tape, and my gap was 0.47mm... so, 12 layers would be too thick (0.48mm, 11 (0.44mm) layers would have been pushing my luck allowing for tolerances in the tape and adhesive, not to mention getting it stuck down flat 10 times... 10 Layers it was then! Stick it on, trim the edges and the central hole, drill through the attachment holes and remove any burrs on the tape, then screw it all back together. And it worked pretty much spot on first time. Classic case of measure 47 times, cut once...
Meanwhile, his machine was basically steeping in descaling solution (you don't know what the machine's been left like when you buy
second hand - removed the shower screen and gave the head a good old cleanup - sadly, with the 2015 you can't backflush, so it was another "soak the bits" job to clean up the head components... All clean, re-assembled and I screwed a preddure gauge onto the portafilter to check pressure - came out at 9.5bar static, so should be pretty close to spot on at "brewing" pressure.
Finally, let it all cool off, and opened the lid to see about the steam wand... basically, it was pretty much the same as the installation in a Baby Twin, that I found on Youtube...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5laAiLnxT0
took less than 30 minutes, 20 of which was swearing at the old wand whilst working out how to thread it through all the other pipework and wiring, then re-threading the slightly longer and more awkward Rancilio one back through the same gap.
It's all working now, buttoned up and leak-free - steaming like a good un, and I'm sat back enjoying a rather nice double espresso shot for my trouble, before my mate calls in on his way from work for a quick masterclass and to collect the damned things.
Only thing I haven't been able to fix for him is the machine is in need of a new head gasket pretty soon, because to get a good seal, the portafilter handle has to be a little over "perpendicular" to the machine - i.e. slightly overtightened. I'll get him to order on, and keep it in stock waiting for when the current one finally goes...
there'd better be a drink in this for me, and I'm not talking coffee...