Finally pulled a decent shot after 6 weeks of bad ones

I was at my kitchen counter last Saturday morning, getting ready to pull my usual morning espresso. For whatever reason, my grind setting was way off and I got a gusher that finished in 12 seconds. I backed off the dial about 3 clicks, did a quick purge, and somehow hit a perfect 28 second pull with some real sweetness coming through. Has anyone else had a random breakthrough like that after a long stretch of frustration?

3 comments

3 Comments

averymartin20d agoMost Upvoted

The 7 second wait @the_elliot mentioned is actually from an old home-barista thread I read about optimizing Gaggia Classic boilers.

sean78221d ago

...and my buddy Tom, he had this exact same thing happen with his Gaggia. He was about ready to throw the whole machine out after a month of sour shots. Then one day he accidentally used water that was way hotter than normal (like, forgot the boiler was on after steaming) and pulled this insane ristretto with actual crema. He said it tasted like "liquid dark chocolate with a hint of cherry" which sounds ridiculous but I saw the look on his face. He's been chasing that dragon ever since and hasn't hit it again, poor guy.

the_elliot21d ago

Tried the same thing for weeks after reading about temp surfing on a forum, wasn't working for me either. What finally clicked was flushing water through the group head until the brew light came back on, then waiting exactly 7 seconds before pulling the shot. @sean782 that timing thing was a game changer, went from sour battery acid to actual balanced shots with sweetness. Still took me another week to dial in the grind setting once the temp was right. Your buddy Tom probably got lucky with the perfect combo of temp and grind that one time, that's the brutal part about this hobby.