Grind 16.0g of beans (measured on the way out of the grinder, NOT beans added to the grinder). Shake to break up clumps, transfer carefully to PF. Tap downwards on the counter a couple of times, then a couple of side taps to level the coffee.

Place the PF into the warmed up (at least 20min) & flushed machine. Place your cup on scales under the PF & pull 48g out. Record how long it takes (time the pump runs for) & report back on what you think of it. If it is absurdly sour, grind a tad finer.

Where to start on grind setting? Start on the coarser end, maybe 20-22?

Report back before getting into a frenzy of shot making. Drink the whole shot (if you can) note how anything changes from top to bottom.

Personally, I would use Volvic, or Waitrose Lockhills over Ashbeck.

 

Grind 16.0g of beans (measured on the way out of the grinder, NOT beans added to the grinder). Shake to break up clumps, transfer carefully to PF. Tap downwards on the counter a couple of times, then a couple of side taps to level the coffee.

Place the PF into the warmed up (at least 20min) & flushed machine. Place your cup on scales under the PF & pull 48g out. Record how long it takes (time the pump runs for) & report back on what you think of it. If it is absurdly sour, grind a tad finer.

Can I ask why you suggest 1:3 as a starting ratio? Most everywhere I see seems to suggest 1:2.

 

Hey Giaxou, hope the Niche is working fine!

As for dialing in, I was using this one around the 20-25 mark if I remember correctly. You might have trouble with the Lavazza beans as they might not be fresh enough. Using beans from a reputable roaster that are 10 to 30 days post roast will yield much much better results.

I also think the Gaggia Classic likes slightly higher dose, but I haven't used one in 3 years, so don't be afraid of trying different doses. 16g would be on the lower side of the range, and you probably won't want to go over 20g. In any case there needs to be some room between the coffee puck and the shower screen of the machine.
I'd personally start at 18g, but YMMV.

Choose a ratio (as a starting point, 1:2 for darker roast should be fine, 1:3 for lighter roasted beans).
Pull a shot, and check two things:
- how long did it take to reach your target output? Aim for 25-35 sec.
- how does it taste? This is where things become complicated as taste needs to be trained, and preferences vary across people.

As a rule of thumb, if it's flowed fast and tastes sour, you want to either grind finer / increase the dose of coffe grounds / pull a longer ratio (say 1:3 instead of 1:2). Only change one variable at a time.

If that wasn't complicated enougn, I'd add that this all assumes good puck preparation. You could have your grinder perfectly dialed in and have a shot that tastes bad because of channeling etc.

TL;DR: I'd use fresh beans, grind 18g, aim for 36g output in around 25-35 sec, adjust grind to get in that range, and adjust to taste from there.

PS: if you haven't done so, I'd modify the OPV pressure on the Gaggia to around 9 bar. It's not mandatory, but it'll help.

 

As for dialing in, I was using this one around the 20-25 mark if I remember correctly.

This is when calibrating the finest point to 0? I've seen people calibrating it to various levels and got confused at this point.

 

Well I've got a 1kg bag of Chocolate Point to learn my Gaggia Classic with and a day off tomorrow so I guess I'll give it a go!

Thanks

 

Well I've got a 1kg bag of Chocolate Point to learn my Gaggia Classic with and a day off tomorrow so I guess I'll give it a go!

Thanks

Good luck, try not to get into a shot making frenzy, make changes in grind only to start with, ideally in one direction until the wheels come off then backtrack to last best result.

 

I'm in a similar place, I go for 18g in and 40g out which I get in about 25-30s.

I've tried heeding your advice MWJB and freeing myself from this way of thinking but I feel like I need to have some kind of guideline to experiment out from.

My shots sometimes taste "good", but there's always a level of sourness that I don't always like.

I really want to pull multiple shots back to back to compare immediately the difference that grind, ratio etc make but that's not so easy with the Classic when you have to wait atleast 5-10 minutes between each shot.

I've got 500g of Chocolate Point left in the freezer and a bag of Sweet Shop from Square Mile. Unsure whether to persevere with CP or switch to Sweet Shop and see if I just don't like the taste of CP

 

I'm in a similar place, I go for 18g in and 40g out which I get in about 25-30s.

I've tried heeding your advice MWJB and freeing myself from this way of thinking but I feel like I need to have some kind of guideline to experiment out from.

My shots sometimes taste "good", but there's always a level of sourness that I don't always like.

I really want to pull multiple shots back to back to compare immediately the difference that grind, ratio etc make but that's not so easy with the Classic when you have to wait atleast 5-10 minutes between each shot.

I've got 500g of Chocolate Point left in the freezer and a bag of Sweet Shop from Square Mile. Unsure whether to persevere with CP or switch to Sweet Shop and see if I just don't like the taste of CP

We've just started on chocolate Point and through a little experimentation on our classic I've found it tastes great with a hotter extraction temp, so my process for CP is....flush the group head, waited for the brew light to come on, then flicked the steam button for 10s before pulling my shot.

I run a ratio of 1:2.1 with 20g in an 18-22 IMS basket with around 42g out in around 35-40s.

The first shot I pulled tasted amazing, same process as described above (temp surfing) but that was with 22g in the basket, 46g out but it took about 60s to pull! I was expecting terrible but it was amazing!

I have a classic with similar mods to the OP, with an MDF (I'm on as fine as the MDF will go). I'm managing until our niche comes in March....

 

Thanks for both your input.

My workflow is:

- ~20 minutes after machine turned on, flush group until light turns off.

- Bring 18g, transfer to PF, leveller and tamp.

- When brew light comes back on (and stays on consistently) flick the steam switch, wait 20s, turn steam off and hit brew button.

- Aim for 40g out and see how long it takes.

I'll try a longer ratio at the same grind setting today and see what happens. Essentially, I don't trust my palate to guide me to the best coffee in the most direct way but I do realise how stupid that sounds. Also I'm doubtful that my prep/temp surfing is super consistent so struggle to assign any changes in taste directly to a specific variable.

 

Also I'm doubtful that my prep/temp surfing is super consistent so struggle to assign any changes in taste directly to a specific variable.

Well focus on the things you can control & be consistent with your prep. The variable you are most looking to guide you is grind, at a feasible ratio.

You're not always expecting to get the best coffee, unless you are always buying the best coffee, so 'nice', or 'very nice' will do

 

Thank you MWJB and Olivier.

I am getting a 20g/60g shot of "Grumpy Mule Sumatra" in about 30secs which tastes just alright for my palate, grinding at point 16 on NZ.

Anything above that point and the shot is under-extracted.

Do people go as low as point 16 to get a decent taste? So far I was dialing in at around 23-/+ for various beans.

 

Do people go as low as point 16 to get a decent taste? So far I was dialing in at around 23-/+ for various beans.

You can't compare grind settings really, could be out by 4 notches or even more from one grinder to the next + they break in, you're using different equipment, water etc etc

Sometimes I grind at 8, sometimes I grind at 10, sometimes 15. When I first got I'm sure I was grinding around 18-22. No point in thinking about it, just use the notches as references for how much finer/coarser you're going and the difference it makes.

@moppy that ever present level of sourness could be because the coffee isn't rested enough, could also be low alkalinity water, the strength of the coffee (ratio) not to your taste, or even a dirty group/shower screen. Could be channelling too.

 

Where can you buy the niche zero, UK?

 

Dialling in is mostly about consistency in my opinion.

If you can repeat - even if it's bad - then you can make a change and know "it tastes better i'll go forward - it's worse I'll head back".

One other point you need to be mindful of, and the PID solves the problem to a degree (pun intended 😹) is temperature stability.

I say to a degree, because the Gaggia Classic boiler is small - about 120ml so when you turn the pump on and take say 60ml water out the water temp will plummet. A PID will help here as well by starting heating early. I think that is another reason why longer shot times seem to be better for me than shorter ones.

Without a PID it's like frying an egg on pan, which starts off too hot, then cools until it is too cold, then it heats up until it gets too hot etc. This is the temp surfing problem, and the range is probably 10C at least.

A PID gives you a visual feedback about the temperature, so you know when it's ready to go

So without a PID, you have to pay close attention to when the lights go off->on (heating stops -now approaching top of the cycle) and on->off (reheating begins - now at the bottom of the cycle). I used to count to 10 after the light went on. This sometimes means you have to wait.

The light being on or off does not tell you much about the temperature - only tells you if the heating element is fully inactive / fully active.

hth.

 

I know you have heard people suggest that you need to hit your ratio in a specific number of seconds, it is widely quoted, but it is just a commonly held misconception. So, I'm not trying to make you look daft, you are seeing advice and assuming it is solid. But time alone is not your, or anyone else's measure of consistency. It simply doesn't work. I'm not saying it just doesn't work in my experience, I am saying it does not work at all, for anyone. The sooner you give up on expecting beans & grinds to stick to a timetable, the sooner your coffee will be more consistent. When it is consistent, we can start to shift the grind setting, or the ratio, to steer the flavour balance.

Let me give you a bit of perspective: 18:42g should result in a cup about 8% concentration. If you grind just as you have for espresso & mix 18g of coffee with 100g of hot water in a cup/French press/cupping bowl (in this scenario 3x the weight of the dose will be absorbed by the coffee leaving about 45g of liquid you can actually drink), it will never hit 8%. The Sun will die before this happens. That is the effect time alone has on coffee brewing.

Espresso is percolation, percolation relies on you passing a known quantity of water, at a roughly ideal temp, through a bed of coffee of a certain size. Time will have the largest variation in consistent extractions, compared to dose, output, extraction & flavour balance..

 

I know you have heard people suggest that you need to hit your ratio in a specific number of seconds, it is widely quoted, but it is just a commonly held misconception. So, I'm not trying to make you look daft, you are seeing advice and assuming it is solid. But time alone is not your, or anyone else's measure of consistency. It simply doesn't work. I'm not saying it just doesn't work in my experience, I am saying it does not work at all, for anyone. The sooner you give up on expecting beans & grinds to stick to a timetable, the sooner your coffee will be more consistent. When it is consistent, we can start to shift the grind setting, or the ratio, to steer the flavour balance.

Let me give you a bit of perspective: 18:42g should result in a cup about 8% concentration. If you grind just as you have for espresso & mix 18g of coffee with 100g of hot water in a cup/French press/cupping bowl (in this scenario 3x the weight of the dose will be absorbed by the coffee leaving about 45g of liquid you can actually drink), it will never hit 8%. The Sun will die before this happens. That is the effect time alone has on coffee brewing.

Espresso is percolation, percolation relies on you passing a known quantity of water, at a roughly ideal temp, through a bed of coffee of a certain size. Time will have the largest variation in consistent extractions, compared to dose, output, extraction & flavour balance..

I missed this reply sorry, I only feel daft when I have coffee up my wall 🤣 other wise I feel normal, unknowledgable and in the dark haha.

What is your process. You get a new bag of beans. What do you do how are you taking on the process as its bitter.

 

Use a bigger, wider cup so the spouts of the PF fit inside it, whilst the cup is on the scales.

 

A bottomless PF also helps (in many ways).

 

Definitely no expert but i really like mwjb's advice. When I started off, and for many years, and because I'm a bit ocd, I tried to chase ticking off all boxes in all the rules and spent a good bit of time getting frustrated. With all the best kit in the world, your taste preference hasn't even been taken into account. Measurements and tweaks are useful to help you get more consistent and bring you reliably closer to your preference, but in the end it's all about what you like. Recognise also that just like wine or beer or music, you may simply not like a specific type of coffee and nothing you do dialling in will change that. Best of luck anyway and keep at it.

Edit: I should also add that as other have alluded to before, and I'm not dissing the little guy, accept that the Gaggia Classic is not conducive to consistency. I had one myself for twenty years (pimped to hell, now looking to sell) and even with every upgrade under the sun, it was still capable of having 'difficult mornings'. A couple of years ago, I made a significant upgrade to an ECM Mechanika V Slim and it changed everything. My shot to shot consistency was no longer a consideration. It was no effort to pull a decent shot first time. With all the love i have for my gaggia and all the years of service it gave me, it was never able to do what the ECM does. But then again that's the difference between an entry level machine and a good mid range one.

Anyway the moral of this story is be easy on yourself and don't be disheartened if you aren't always on point because although you can absolutely get good results with your classic, it simply wasn't designed to do what we are perhaps expecting of it and even if it does, I certainly never found it possible (or at least straightforward) to do that shot after shot with reliable consistency.

The issue with significantly upgrading one part of your setup (niche zero) is that it might highlight the shortfall elsewhere. The biggest lesson I had from stepping up from Gaggia to ECM was that my grinder was no longer up to snuff. The cycle never ends lol.

 

Definitely no expert but i really like mwjb's advice. When I started off, and for many years, and because I'm a bit ocd, I tried to chase ticking off all boxes in all the rules and spent a good bit of time getting frustrated. With all the best kit in the world, your taste preference hasn't even been taken into account. Measurements and tweaks are useful to help you get more consistent and bring you reliably closer to your preference, but in the end it's all about what you like. Recognise also that just like wine or beer or music, you may simply not like a specific type of coffee and nothing you do dialling in will change that. Best of luck anyway and keep at it.

Edit: I should also add that as other have alluded to before, and I'm not dissing the little guy, accept that the Gaggia Classic is not conducive to consistency. I had one myself for twenty years (pimped to hell, now looking to sell) and even with every upgrade under the sun, it was still capable of having 'difficult mornings'. A couple of years ago, I made a significant upgrade to an ECM Mechanika V Slim and it changed everything. My shot to shot consistency was no longer a consideration. It was no effort to pull a decent shot first time. With all the love i have for my gaggia and all the years of service it gave me, it was never able to do what the ECM does. But then again that's the difference between an entry level machine and a good mid range one.

Anyway the moral of this story is be easy on yourself and don't be disheartened if you aren't always on point because although you can absolutely get good results with your classic, it simply wasn't designed to do what we are perhaps expecting of it and even if it does, I certainly never found it possible (or at least straightforward) to do that shot after shot with reliable consistency.

The issue with significantly upgrading one part of your setup (niche zero) is that it might highlight the shortfall elsewhere. The biggest lesson I had from stepping up from Gaggia to ECM was that my grinder was no longer up to snuff. The cycle never ends lol.

Machine A works machine B works.

Machine B needs upgrading but now A cant match that level, so A needs upgradin, but A is now showing B could be improved and so the cycle continues 🤣🤣🤣

 

Shot time - People who weigh out allow that to vary to maintain a certain ratio. Ratio within reason is the ruling factor. Time changes need to be larger to have an effect. Say using 20 or 40 instead of 30. I use 30 as my machine gives that when I press a button. It has pre infusion so maybe the other number that gets mentioned would be better. 25 secs. So pick some time if you want to work that way. And pull a shot. Taste it etc. Finer grind reduces the ratio. Small changes. Same with coarser increasing it. The changes can be so small that they aren't easy to do. Depends on the grinder to some extent but generally will be exceedingly small.

So someone wants to try risteretto or lungo. Simple try 20 and 40 sec shots at what ever settings you are using. Also maybe try various ratios at these times. Some always tune for 40sec shots. That wouldn't be a lungo. Or some way towards 20 or 40 secs.

2 things can go wrong.

Not wasting grinds from the previous grinder setting after the new one has been set. Wasting even a double could be a good idea. That doesn't have to apply when beans are weighed into a grinder providing they do get the majority of the grinds out each time.

The other one is less obvious. Too much coffee in the basket. Grinds can't expand sufficiently so grind finishes up being coarser than it could be. It is possible to tune like this but .......... So coin test to make sure there is some room. That can be done when the grind is somewhere in the ballpark say ratios from 2 to 3. It may be possible to add a bit more but too much reduces extraction and output. Reducing from that say to weaken what comes out is easier as pucks get too wet at some point but the ratio will change as well so grind finer for the same. It might even be worth working through the ratios again. Dose weight changes can have rather noticeable effects on taste at the same ratio. For instance I decided to try 16g rather than 13.5 via a different basket last night for a change. A ratio of 2 came out due to a guess on grinder setting. Taste at that ratio was nothing remotely like it was with 13.5. The shot tool 33sec. I know that if I adjust that to 30 via the grinder taste wont change much. I know from when the tamper went in that the basket isn't over filled. In fact if anything it's a bit low. I do know 16g went in.

Get into the habit of checking things with scales. It takes seconds so easy to do. I button push for shots but still weigh the output and strive to keep it the same all of the time. Bit of a mad hobby really. I am weighing beans into a grinder. I have checked that this is consistent enough but still check now and again. I have used a timed doserless grinder. I know that the output will vary over time and that the time setting will need changing to keep it as constant as it can be. I also know that when the grind setting on these is changed the output will as well. If people at least check weights and taste changes they may have a clue why. Prep is a common reason.

Drink coffee out. All of this usually goes on while the people who are drinking aren't watching. Mind you I believe some coffee shops appear to do this while people are watching and charge more but that doesn't mean the rest make crap coffee.