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
Try and nail down a 30 second 2:1 pull, so about 20g of liquid out with 10g of beans. And give the hand grinder a try.
If the puck after is really wet and soupy, try more coffee, if it's a brick and water doesn't want to flow, try a bit less.
Something that could be happening with the cheap grinder is it could be producing a lot of random grind sizes, so you end up with super fine grinds, the grinds you want, and coarse grinds. This would make it hard to get a good tasting shot no matter what you end up with for timing and ratios.