The GAGGIUINO is a mod that adds, as I understand it, the ability to set repeatable temperature, pressure and flow profiles to a consumer-grade Gaggia espresso machine, new or old. The only commercial equivalent is, I think, the Decent Espresso machine that costs around £3,000.
I’ve been thinking about buying a used Gaggia for a few hundred quid and trying this out. There are even kits with almost all the necessary parts and a PCB ready to go.
Wondered if anyone else had tried it out or if others might find it interesting.
There’s various vids on the project on YouTube as well as a Discord channel.
I currently use a Cafelat Robot and have been wondering about investing in an automatic machine, this seems like a cool project to go along with it. Quite tempting…
FWIW, I think that the “prosumer” espresso machine market is aimed at clueless people with a lot of money who imagine that buying expensive gear will get them the perfect espresso. Manufacturers can extract high rents from this market, so there is no reason to lower the price. It will never trickle down (the components themselves are super-cheap, btw, manufacturing an espresso machine with all the sensors, displays and processors would probably cost less than $100 extra for the manufaturer, including product design and prototyping).
[The photography equivalent is the people who buy the super bulky but not so sharp 8-600mm (yes, I am exaggerating) lenses because they imagine it will give them better photos, walk around with 4 kilos of camera gear while on holiday, soon get tired of the whole experience and never touch the camera again.]
If you like good espresso, I would recommend that you
Enroll in a local barrista class to learn the basics and identify the basic mistakes. You are not going for the “perfect” espresso, whatever that is, just learning to avoid the conditions that give you a bad one. If given the choice, go for those offered by cafes, not the shops that sell gear (because the latter want to sell you gear). Usually 2–3 hours of instruction is sufficient for a dedicated amateur.
Get a good grinder. Learn to identify the quality of the grind (eg by spreading it on a white surface and using a magnifying glass).
Get a decent espresso machine. A used Gaggia or Silvia or similar would be the obvious choice in Europe. Have it reconditioned by a shop that knows what it is doing (gaskets etc). It is not worth doing it yourself usually because mail ordering all the parts may cost more than what they would charge, but YMMV. Ask the shop mentioned in (1) to give you recommendations.
Go back to the place where you took the class and ask for a private, one-on-one class with your own machine. Your barrista will be able to coax pretty good espressos out of it, hopefully. Try approximating that and when you fail, you will get help.
Yes, I know it is very tempting to go for gear whenever I want to improve something, whether it is photography, espressos, music, biking, etc. I do it all the time, but always find that learning new skills has higher returns.
There’s so much hand wavy chatter in espresso and even drip coffee world that I liked the idea of measurable, repeatable process. Reminds me a bit of the waffle-filled audiophile world before the advent of digital signal processing and things like the free room EQ wizard software
I definitely don’t want to talk you out of it if you otherwise enjoy tinkering with electronics. It’s just that I don’t think that espresso is so super-complicated that you need a computer to make one, and IMO you would be missing a very important variable anyway (the grind). Unless you learn to control that, there is no point in calibrating the temperature to 3 significant digits.
FWIW, I would avoid online coffee forums. Yes, the comparison to the audiophile world is spot on.
As is typical, Americans have already perfected and simplified this process: (1) heat water (2) fetch the foldgers from the freezer (3) add to hot water and stir.
Agreed. I was going to add in my earlier reply (but the movie was about to start) that the problem with the idea of measurable and repeatable is that there are at least two other mostly uncontrollable variables, bean and roast.
My American friend, now married to an Italian man, about switching from espresso to filter coffee (written for my daughter, who brews coffee with a very basic espresso machine or with a moka pot now, from vacuum-packaged pre-ground coffee, but said she’d get an American-style machine once she has her own place):
Let’s say you’re a person who likes spaghetti, made with a nice rich tomato sauce, fresh basil, and a sprinkling of fresh-grated parmesan cheese straight from an aging cave in Parma on top. Take that, put it in a blender with a litre of water and push the turbo button. Can you switch to that?
Spaghetti tea is not spaghetti. American coffee is not coffee. You would get the same thing buy microwaving a single coffee bean in your mug of water.
In coffee, there is right and wrong, good and evil. Of course, you can’t recognise wrong until you’ve had right.
I use a Wacaco Nanopresso when I travel (to places where it is hard to get espressos, eg multi-day hikes). It has versions both for ground coffee and a Nespresso capsules. It is surprisingly good for how small and simple it is. You need hot water though, it is a purely mechanical thing.
