New Baby Gaggia and sunbeam grinder......no idea tho :S:S

[Shimmy]

Hi,

So after months of toying with the idea, I finally purchased the Baby Gaggia Twin and the Sunbeam EM0480 Grinder.

I powered it up and followed all the instructions but I jst cant get it happpening.

I get nearly no flow coming thru....jst a few drips of very very oily coffee.

I should start with the grinder. In the manual, for espresso machine it says to set it to 12 - 16. I tried that but as i was having this problem, I have now set it to nearly as coarse as it goes (20) it goes up to 25....(although i must say it still looks very fine.) It is very oily tho. I tried 2 different batches of beans. One was roasted about a week ago, the other was bought from the supermarket. Both came out of the grinder very oily and stuck together.

I tried putting some pre ground horrible dry grind thru and it was definately better. I got a fairly good flow.

Also, can someone tell me, with this gaggia, you can program how long the water flows thru the coffee. Must this be done before starting? or does it come pre programmed?

Thanks in advance

Shimmy

 

[Alun_evans]

Hello Shimmy, hopefully sorted out the machine/grinder issues by now. I am not familiar with the Gaggia in question, but many of the home machines that Gaggia makes hove programmable shot tmes (normally 2 options- single shot, double shot and a manual switch for long black etc. The shot time (not volume of water delivered) is controlled by the grind and the tamping. If I am not wrong the Gaggia delivers water through a high pressure vibration pump set at 13-15bar. It will take some practice to get the shot times down I reckon,

Regarding th grinder, Sunbeam is a solid Aussie/Kiwi brand and has won awards through both countries consumer institutes for providing a good product. However, occasionally things do go wrong. I wuld take the grinder in to a representative office and just let them have a look over it. At least that would tell you if the grinder is at fault- rather that the coffee (which seeing you have used several roasts is unlikely

 

[shadow745]

To be honest I think shot time and volume is highly overrated. I've owned a machine that offered programmable flow and I never did like using that option. Simply because there are way too many variables in espresso to get exact results day after day. No 2 shots will be identical.

I think your machine has one boiler for brewing and a thermoblock for steaming. I have no idea why Gaggia would use that because they could've simply added a 2nd boiler and it'd be just fine for most situations, especially for home use.

Regarding the grinder, what you need to do is ignore any numbers on the grinder. They're simply for a quick reference. Grind finer each time you pull a shot and try to keep the dose, distribution, tamp, etc. the same for each. Once the flow slows down too much, simply back off (more coarse grinding) until you get the desired flow. There's no magical number, just experimenting. Once the beans age you'll probably have to grind a bit finer.

DEFINITELY don't use preground (more than 5 minutes old since grinding) as you'll get nasty shots that may cause you to give up on your machine. Just keep fresh beans from a reputable roaster onhand and experiment. It can take months to lock onto a consistent pattern.

BTW, what beans are you using? Later!