My birthday is still almost two months away but she found a really good deal on it (used but in good condition) and was too excited to wait. Plus we don’t really have anywhere to hide it for that long without me accidentally finding it anyway.
I’m still learning how to use it but it’s been fun so far. My first two shots (yesterday) weren’t great, my third (today) turned out a lot better, and my fourth was nearly perfect. Still too inconsistent to be confident yet but I’m enjoying the learning process. I’ve heard the GCP is user upgradable, I may look into that in the future. I’ve read that upgrading the over pressure valve is a big upgrade, as is a brass boiler, but that’s for future me to think about, right now I still want to learn how to use it. I’ve also read about Gaggimate and Gaggiuino which seem really interesting. Again, I’ll do that rabbit hole in the future. I know there’s lots of gadgets and stuff for espresso too, that’s something else I’ll want to get into in the future, but for right now I’m really having fun just trying to figure out pull time, heat up time, grind size, etc. My wife is also having a ton of fun with it.
Also, I know there’s no scale in the picture but I do use one, I just figured the picture would look nicer staged like this.
Since you got that used there is a chance that it has the older spring style pressure valve, which you can just adjust yourself. I did it to the used one I bought years ago, it was very easy.
https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/blogs/the-reading-room/gaggia-classic-opv-adjustment
I’ve heard that’s a pretty important upgrade, I was planning on doing it soon. Glad to hear it’s an easy upgrade.
If you have the model I’m talking about it isn’t even an upgrade, it’s just an adjustment. There’s tools you need if you want it to be perfectly exact, but eyeballing it worked fine for me.
The newer ones you have to buy a replacement part though.
We just did the Gaggimate recently, it’s great. If you ever decode to do one of these, neither are FOSS, BUT while Gaggiuno went closed source a long time ago, Gaggimate has said they will always be source available under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (a noncommercial free to do whatever with attribution license). That’s what made the decision for me. I didn’t want features locked behind closed doors.
That’s very good to know, that makes me lean more towards the Gaggimate. Thanks for the info.
Also check out the clevercoffe which is a fully open source project:
https://github.com/rancilio-pid/clevercoffee
It started out on the Rancilio Silvia, but Afaik also supports the Gaggia. You might want check out clevercoffee.de as well with Google translator as the project seemed to start out here in Germany (and probably is less known for that reason).
It’s Esp32 based and has different completion “grades” from PID only functionalty to including Pump and pressure fine control and a scale to measure extraction speeds.
I had not seen this one. I will keep my eye on it, as the main thing it’s missing is profiling.
Is your wife single?
I also choose this guys wife
Don’t settle, find the one that’ll install Gagguino mod on it.
That kind of attitude keeps people perpetually single.
Not wrong. 😄
Hell yeah! Congrats, that’s a great machine
I don’t know if his wife would appreciate being called a machine
Thank you! I was super excited to set it up and play with it. Looking forward to lots of espresso with this machine.
Great machine, congrats
Tbh imo the best upgrades at first are less costly and much easier. You can get a shorter drip tray for like $12 and that makes using a scale much much easier. An open portafilter can be expensive but cheap ones exist too. Mine was like $30 and works fine, a good basket is like $10-20.
The opv mod is often not necessary depending on your model year but if it is that’s worthwhile because it’s dirt cheap (like a $3 spring) and simple to do.
after that imo a good grinder is where you should go if you don’t already have one. I recently got a Chinese grinder (mines branded mokkom but it exists under several names) that has 64mm flat burrs for like $150, which is crazy bc the next cheapest grinder with 64mm flat burrs is like $500. I’ve used it for a couple of months now and it performs well
The gaggiuino/gaggimate/pid stuff is really nice to have (I have gaggiuino installed, fwiw) but imo it makes more sense to get to know the machine well first. You don’t need any of this to make good coffee as you’ve found out. These help make it more repeatable and work better with things like lighter roasts
The brass boiler imo isn’t worth it. If your boiler is pitted a new aluminum boiler is like $30 whereas brass is over $200. If it’s not pitted you’re fine. If you have one of the ones from the few years they did a coated aluminum boiler they’ll probably replace it for free fyi. If you have one from one of those years (I think 2019? Could be wrong) steam into an empty cup after the boiler has sat a few days. If there’s a bunch of black flakes in it e-mail gaggia and they’ll likely replace it because they got a shitload of bad press for this issue
Again, congratulations. IMO the gaggia is the peak machine. Super simple construction and parts available everywhere so it can run smoothly basically forever, easy to repair, and it can make espresso on par with machines 5-10x the price with a few (relatively) simple mods. Even without those imo it outperforms everything in its price class once you get the hang of using it.
Thanks for all the info! I appreciate it.
A shorter drip tray definitely sounds appealing, I’ll probably pick that one up soon. Everything else I’ll probably wait a while, but I’ll come back to your comment when I’m ready to upgrade/mod.
64mm flat burr grinder for $150? And I thought the DF64 was a deal…
https://mokkomcoffee.com/collections/coffee-grinders
$180 on their site but resellers often put it on sale. Worth looking at the other names too, shardor is one, and they can be cheaper too. Same design but slight differences (mokkom has metal housing vs all plastic for shardor, mokkom offers titanium coated burrs) but the same basic machine otherwise
The burrs aren’t as good as a df64 but for the price difference you could upgrade this to SSP red coated burrs and still come out ahead with even better performance
This is crazy either way. Makes sense tho, DF64 had no competition for a while and PRC is just getting into the quality electric flat burr grinders. The DF64’s only expensive components are the burr set and the motor. I bet there’s margin to cut.
I don’t know that specific machine, but some advice in general for making good espresso at home
- Get a scale so you can measure inputs and outputs
- Upgrade your grinder before your machine
- A dosing funnel is really helpful, but not necessary
- Spritz your beans with a bit of water before you grind to eliminate static electricity
- A WDT is helpful for declumping the grounds if you don’t have a peak grinder
- A distributor and weighted tamper can help improve your puck prep
- You don’t need a rubber mat. Just get a towel to put down. I bought a 50 pack of “car wash towels” and use those for everything
- Clean your machine at least once a month
I have/do some of that already but I’ll look into incorporating the rest. Thanks for the tips.
This is actually a very sneaky way of your wife telling you that you have too much free time.
I’m happy for you, this is great. Also, Happy Early Birthday.
Thank you very much!
Hell yeah, that’s an amazing machine! If you like tinkering and wanna make your Gaggia even better, check out GaggiMate if you haven’t already. It allows you to do pretty much everything something like a Decent DE1 ($2500+) can do such as pressure profiling, flow control, PID tuning, smart scale connection, etc. for a fraction of the cost.
It’s not too hard to install if you’re a little bit crafty either, took me about a day to install mine. I can’t recommend it enough.
I’ve heard of it but haven’t done much research yet. How does it compare to the Gaggiuino, do you know? I’ve heard good things about both.
It used to be behind Gagguino in terms of features, but it’s caught up incredibly quickly, now I believe the only thing Gaggimate doesn’t have is the option for an integrated scale built into the drip tray.
The biggest thing for me was that Gagguino recently stopped being open source, while Gaggimate is still committed to being fully open source. And in my opinion, Gaggimate has more polish and looks better visually. But definitely do your own research and compare them yourself if you’re curious.
From a quick bit of research the Gaggimate certainly seems more visually pleasing, and I like that it’s open source. I’ll do more research but right now that one seems like more of my thing. Thanks for the info.
First time I hear about it, how does it compare to the Gagguino?
They both have their pros and cons, with the main takeaway being that Gaggiuino tends to be a bit more configurable and stable but lacks visual polish and has less frequent updates. Gaggimate is the relative newcomer, but has since caught up to Gaggiuino in terms of features for the most part. But the biggest thing for me is that Gaggiuino is no longer open source, while Gaggimate is still fully committed to being open source which I find super important for a DIY project such as this.
Oh that sucks, I was not aware of it going closed source
I got the same one! Be very delicate with the knob for the steamer wand, mine broke after a handful of uses. There are third party ones that are made of more resilient materials.
Happy coffee-making!
Oh interesting! I don’t do milk drinks but my wife does, I’ll let her know to keep an eye on it.
In saying that I wanted to learn latte art to surprise her with a nice drink so I will be using the steam wand for the next little while, so I’ll be careful with it too.
You have wired Internet on your kitchen?
Doesn’t everyone put their gaming pc right beside their kitchen sink? How else are you supposed to liquid cool?
Nah actually it’s for a landline. Used to be really common to have a home phone in your kitchen, at least in Canada anyway.
Oh! We had a wall mounted phone with a really long cord cord. It got burned I few times when it it the stove. US here
Ah yeah, makes sense. I wouldn’t want a phone near the stove honestly, seems like a recipe (ha) for disaster.
The phone itself wasn’t close the stove. The extra long coiled cord for the handset occasionally found itself too close.
Hey I have the same one and it was a birthday gift. I use it every day for 2 years and its beautiful. Grab some puro and deacale it every month. The first upgrade to help with consistency should be a burr grinder. I waited too long, and I gotta say it is a beautiful thing. I no longer pull watery shots. Secondly ali express has decent espresso tools for cheap, like distributers spring loaded Tamps, dosing rings, baskets, tamping stations and screens.
My general advice for espresso is keep it simple and not overthink it. Don’t weigh your beans, don’t single dose, don’t spray water or WDT or do any of that esoteric espresso nerd jazz.
Get a burr grinder that grinds fine enough for espresso in the 200-400€ range, backflush the machine regularly (aim for every morning (with detergent once a week), descale with citric acid once a year, don’t overspend on artisanal locally roasted beans unless you have the money and enjoy the ritual of picking them up.There’s a lot of unnecessary optimization in the espresso world like in a lot of hobbies. Italians did fine without all that for the better part of a century.
Don’t listen to James Hoffman.
Congrats and welcome to the club! I have the evo pro and put off doing any upgrades until I had it replaced with a non-coated boiler, but after using it for a while it does so well that I haven’t really thought about doing any upgrades. I may gagguino-fy it when I have time though.
I haven’t really done the research in Gaggiuino vs Gaggimate yet but I’m sure one of them will find their way onto my machine in the future. It definitely looks really cool and fun to play with.
Gotta learn to make some good cappuccino art to surprise her back now!
That’s the plan actually! I’m usually gone for work hours before she even wakes up so I’m planning on practicing latte art and surprising her on a day off when I’ve got it nailed.
