Hi,
I've been using a Delonghi Dedica for years with the pressurised basket and found that it makes pretty good coffee (to my untrained taste buds).
Recently bought an unpressurised basket and handle for it, but having trouble getting good coffee out of it.
I'm grinding much, much finer that before (still using a cheap electric bur grinder). I've found this is the only way to get crema. If i go one step finer on the grinder, the coffee machine cant even pump water through the grounds.
Using about 10g of coffee and tamping hard to create pressure, but even with that little coffee I'm just getting very strong and very bitter coffee. Extraction time is about 30 secs.
If I grind coarser, there's not enough pressure and you get an acidic coffee with no crema. Adding more coffee doesn't appear to create more pressure. Tamping harder doesn't seem to make much difference.
I wonder if anyone here has mastered good coffee with this machine.
May try my hand grinder next time. Could be the grinder is too cheap.
Cheers
I have a dedica and find it can be a little underpowered with an unpressurized basket (though the coffee looks so pretty). First thing I’d try is - without adjusting your grind - to back off to 8g to reduce the extraction time and see how it is.
If you’ve also had it for a while and have never descaled you should do that as well, even if the machine hasn’t bugged you about it yet.
Thanks.
And yep, I descale it every time it asks me to.