Pro tip: dialing in a light roast on my old espresso machine took me three full days of wasted beans.

I kept chasing a sour shot because everyone online said to grind finer and push the temperature, but the real fix for my specific machine was actually lowering the brew pressure by a full bar, which I only found in a forum post from 2017.

2 comments

2 Comments

joseph_hunt1d ago

Man, I feel this so hard lol. I burned through a whole bag of some fancy Ethiopian beans trying to fix a sour shot on my old Gaggia. Every video said grind finer, but it just made things worse and choked the machine. Turns out the previous owner had messed with the over pressure valve and it was running way too high. Found some ancient blog post about adjusting the spring, and that was the fix. The amount of time I wasted because the common advice was wrong for my setup is crazy.

robert_craig1d ago

My old Rancilio Silvia had the same problem. I went through two weeks of terrible coffee before I checked the pressure with a portafilter gauge. It was sitting at 12 bar, way too high. A quick adjustment of the OPV brought it down to 9, and it was like a different machine. Sometimes the basic advice just doesn't apply to a used machine with a hidden history.