Like most things worth doing, there are very few shortcuts to making excellent espresso.  If you know of some, I’d like to hear about them.  Maybe you have a super automatic that makes awesome espresso.  Whatever your equipment, it seems to me that all of the ingredients must be present, with the appropriate attention to detail for each aspect of extraction.  The points below are things I’ve heard all along, and I repeat them deliberately to emphasize that I’ve found them each to be true; anything left out blows a hole in the operation.  Quit worrying about art on your coffee; steam the milk, put it on the coffee.  Concentrate on what matters:  getting rid of any sourness, bitterness, blow-outs, and generally eliminating poor extraction.

1. The pump pressure needs to be 9-bar. I am thankful that the gaggia classic has an OPV valve that can be easily adjusted.  I bought it before I knew that it would be important.
2. The temp needs to be around somewhere around 200 – 203F.  See the description of espresso on the coffeeresearch.org site. They include a discussion of temp.  I installed an Auber Instruments PID kit especially prepared for the gaggia classic.  It doesn’t measure the water temp, it measures the outside of the boiler, with a set point of 216F.  But Auber did a pretty extensive temp study correlating outside temps to water temps to get the right outcomes.
3. The grinder is the hero in the arsenal. Believe it.
1. grind is the trickiest bit, and really must be fine-tuned from trial and error;
2. it’s also an environmental factor that will always shift with the weather.
3. When it gets humid, I have to shift a click or so coarser.
4. When I had a cheap grinder, it was very frustrating to not be able to rely on the setting; it would vary widely from day to day, so the most important piece of equipment, by most accounts, is a reliable burr grinder.
4. Dosing is very important, too; typically I have around 23 grams in the portafilter; but formulas will fail you here; like grind, you have to work with the nuances of the coffee you’re using, and the grind.  In the video below, I knew before I pulled it that it was slightly under-dosed.  So I pulled it until it blonded rather than going strictly by a 25-second length.
5. Distribution is at least as important as dosing and tamp to extracting a good shot.  If you are in a hurry and end up with crappy distribution, you’re likely to have channeling and a poor quality shot.
1. That is why I really like the extra step of fluffing the grounds with a chopstick, as seen in the video below (and described in detail on home-barista.com – I do not concur with grinding into the cup; you can see what’s happening better and be more consistent by grinding into your portafilter).
2. As you have no doubt read, tamp with around 30lb of pressure, keep it a very even stroke, one turn, one direction, and
3. DON’T tap the portafilter after your main tamp. You’ll create channelling.





6. While you’re dialing it all in, the bottomless portafilter is extremely valuable.  it’s not just cool, it lets you see very early in the shot whether you’re going to have channeling, whether your are extracting too slow, lots of things to learn from the view of your shot being extracted.
7. FRESHLY roasted coffee!!!
1. The Costco beans are old, not fresh, and not well-roasted. Don’t buy ‘em.
2. If money is no object, find a local roaster and buy his espresso blend, or find any number of fine roasters, Valhalla Roasters, Bluebeard Roasters, even online sources, like Stumptown, etc.
3. if money is an object, as it is for me, get yourself a popcorn popper (west bend poppery II works great, high watts) and learn the very easy art of roasting your own. My local roaster – big plug for BLUEBEARD ROASTERS – is very kind and makes me a deal on 5lb bags of excellent quality green beans.  I roast it when I need it, and let me tell you, it makes a world of difference to have fresh beans.
8. Shoot for 1-3/4 to 2 oz. in 25 to 29 seconds.  This age-old measure is just a guideline, but it’s useful.  But also, don’t be afraid to throw back some nice rich ristretto shots. If you get to 25 seconds, and there’s an ounce of syrupy goodness, steamed milk covers a multitude of sins.  Also, I’ve found a useful little idea that seems to work:  if your shot is going along fine for 15 to 17 seconds and then suddenly channels, stop the pull and enjoy the coffee.  Chances are it’s just fine.  Or better yet, feed it to your teenager.  What she doesn’t know….

Compare your shots with your favorite commercial establishment; work these factors, and don’t give up until your coffee is every bit as good. There is joy in success!  AJ at Valhalla challenged me over a year ago that it was virtually impossible to get perfectly extracted espresso at home [without a similar machine to his].  Challenge accepted. 

I would say that he’s just about right. There are precious few home machines that can be fine-tuned like the Gaggia Classic.  Some people opt to look for commercial equipment.  But I can tell you from experience that the Gaggia Classic can do it.  I bought my machine very lightly used on ebay for $250.  The Rancilio Rocky grinder was a craigslist find, also lightly used, also for $250.  PID kit was $150.  You’ll find lots of WestBend Poppery and Poppery II ‘roasters’ on ebay.  They’ll range anywhere from $10 to $30.  I was specifically shopping for one that was clean and didn’t have popcorn odors, so I did a buy-it-now for $30 and was very pleased with how nearly new it was.  You need to exercise extreme caution with roasting; you’re raising the temp to just under that magic temp where things spontaneously combust.  If you play with it and decide you are hooked, Sweet Maria’s has a great roaster oven that I’m eying. [update - that i purchased.] more on this subject.