First week with a secondhand espresso machine
A single-boiler espresso machine with a pressurized portafilter, about six years old, came to me from a neighbor who was moving. It had sat in a cupboard for a year. This is what the first week looked like, including the part where I nearly gave up.
Day one: descaling. The reservoir smelled stale and the first flush produced water with white flecks in it. Two cycles with a citric acid solution, 20 g to a liter, run through the group and the steam wand with 20 minute soaks, and then four tanks of clean water. The flecks stopped after the second tank. The shower screen came off with a single screw and had a thick brown crust under it that took ten minutes with a brush.
Day two: first shots with the pressurized basket and pre-ground coffee from a bag that came with the machine. The result was a thin, fast, bitter shot with a fake-looking foam on top. I had read that this is what pressurized baskets do; I had not quite believed how little it resembled espresso. Drinkable with milk, which I suspect is what it was bought for. Day three to five: I swapped in an unpressurized basket I bought for the purpose and started grinding fresh on the hand grinder, which has an espresso range I had never used. The first eight shots were disasters in both directions: a 10 second gusher, then a grind so fine that the pump groaned and 8 g dripped out in 50 seconds. By shot nine, on day five, I had 17 g in and 34 g out in 27 seconds, and it tasted like coffee. Not great coffee. Coffee.
Day six and seven: temperature and routine. The machine runs cool after the light goes out, so flushing a little water through the group and waiting about 20 seconds before pulling made a clear difference in sweetness. I settled on a morning routine: switch on, wait 15 minutes, flush, grind, tamp, flush again briefly, lock in, pull. About six minutes from the first flush to a cup.
Verdict after one week: the machine is limited, the basket swap was essential, and the hand grinder is the real bottleneck because the espresso range takes two minutes of cranking per shot. But the shots are now better than anything I can buy within walking distance, and I have not had a bad morning since Thursday.