SAGE is not GAGGIA
Thank god for that, my gaggia machines spent more time being repaired than being used
My Gaggia Classic (100% manual) is 23 years old and still makes great coffee. I use a Sage Smart Grinder Pro, despite all the snark on the Gaggia forums and locally roasted Monsoon Estates beans.
A couple of things puzzle me on this thread - the suggestion that dark roasts require a finer grind, whereas the opposite is usually considered the case, and the comments about pressure. I guess the inclusion of a pressure gauge gives the impression that it must matter, but really the most important parameter is time. If you are using a non-pressurised double basket then about 14-16g of coffee should take about 25s and if your beans are fresh there should be a decent crema . You might prefer a slightly longer or shorter brew time but that's just taste. For any particular bag of beans the only variable you can really play with is grind size - tamping pressure makes surprisingly little difference, not that that stopped me spending £80 on a tamper.
Can you not also play with the ground amount though? I have a sage barista express and I do vary the grid size, depending on what beans I get. I’ve also adjusted the internal Burr adjustment.
however, I also find that the pour duration is affected by the grind amount. There is a grind amount adjuster on the front and I find this does influence the outcome
PS, I am aware that some people only put 18 g of coffee or so into the hopper each time, but this does seem like extra faff to me on a process that is already time-consuming
Can you not also play with the ground amount though?
Yeah, sorry, you can, it's just something I very seldom do. Not sure how many parts are common between The Smart Grinder Pro and the built in grinders on some of the Sage machines, but I've settled on a grind time that with pretty much all the beans I use fills the double basket on the Gaggia. By 'fills', I mean it's an amount of coffee that enables me to 'just' turn the portafilter to its stop.
