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.

Forget about the crema. That mostly says something about the freshness of the roasted coffee beans.

I never had this particular machine, but there’s one important rule for good espresso: you need a good grinder. It’s one of the most important aspects when making espresso.

Seeing as you’re using a cheap grinder, this is what you need to improve if you want to improve your espresso.

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.

I have a Dedica and made mediocre to bad coffee for a while until I decided to hone in what I was doing. Now I make coffee that’s better than Starbucks but not quite as good as most local coffee shops so I’m pretty pleased.

I would definitely say get freshly roasted beans from a local shop. There likely isn’t a single bag at your grocery store with a roast date on it, so find a coffee roaster. That’s how you get good crema.

10g sounds like so little. I do 15g in, ~32g out in maybe 25 sec. It’s a little different from standard, but whether it’s my preference or this weird machine I found what works for me. Almost no bitterness is what I’m shooting for. I have a spring-loaded tamper for consistent pressure. I also use a puck screen, it makes the puck less sloppy and delivers more consistent water coverage. Both of these are cheap on Amazon and have made a noticeable difference.

Run a blank shot before you make your real shot in order to heat everything up. When cold, it’s hard just putting the portafilter in. After a blank shot, it slides effortlessly as the heat expands the slot. Then just hone in, start a little coarse and then grinding slightly finer until you get a shot that tastes good to you. Use the ratios and times as a guide but ultimately follow your taste buds.

Get a good espresso grinder (hand grinders are fine, as long as they’re made for espresso. No Chinese knockoffs. Yes, they look the same. Yes, they’re much cheaper. They’re almost always worse.

Get good water. Reverse osmosis water is good enough, cheap, and readily available. They make purpose-built espresso water, but it’s expensive. It is, admittedly, much better, but if your budget is tighter, spend that money on the grinder, and use RO water.

Clean your machine. It looks very dirty from the picture. Keep every part that touches the product consistently clean.

Let the machine, filter basket, and the portafilter heat up on the group head for at least 5 minutes before you add the grinds and pull the shots. It makes a difference.

I gave up on that machine and got a stainless steel bialetti. I’ve managed to pull a good shot 1 or 2 times and was never able to get consistent even after I got a good grinder and swapped the showerhead basket for a professional one.

Are the coffee grounds blowing up into the machine? If they aren’t cleaned from there after each coffee is made, it can cause a bitter burnt taste, could be that?

I used that dedica for a while until I killed it. Bottomless portafilter and all. I dont remember the dose but it was double digits, maybe 12-15grams? Id keep dosage and tamp always constant (not too hard and not too soft) and instead vary grind size and shot pull length. I eyeball shot pull lenght and cut it when it starts to look too pale, sometimes I use scales to get ratio roughly right and then ignore scales for the rest of the bean, adjusting grind alone based on flavor as coffee ages.

For getting it right, Go off taste alone. If its acidic and salty, its underextracted and you need to go finer. If its bitter it is over extracted and you need to go coarser. Adjusting pull lenght also plays with under and overextraction and it should be used when grind size is not enough, same for tamping.

There are actually no rules only guidelines. For example I pulled a delicious, sweet shot by accidentally running v60 grind for 16 seconds instead of espresso grind for 32 seconds. I reccomend getting a whiteboard or a notebook and every time you pull a shot you write down what you did. That way you can more easily figure out what the machine likes and how to get back to a working recepie.

That being said, what I remember from my delonghi and sage grinder(breville for you baka gaijin) days was that it was able to produce delicious coffee inconsistently. A WDT and a little funnel that fits your portafilter so you can wdt better can help with having a more consistent shot as it can result in more evenly distributed grounds. But at the end of the day you are tamping it all down anyway so idk.

I broke my delonghi and I am now on timless 64s and lelit victoria and I have less surprises. But I do miss delonghis fast heat up, not gonna lie. I just tell myself that it was stupid expensive for basically same result as delonghi but its going to last me hopefully decades, making it cheaper than going to a cafeteria. If you want to upgrade I reccomend plastic v60 and a gooseneck kettle. That shit is endgame and slam dunks on endgame espresso gear as long as you are not drinking only pure espresso.

I was perfectly happy with my pressurized basket but now you’ve created a new need for a depressurized one (and why not a bottomless too)! Thanks 😅