My birthday is still almost two months away but she found a really good deal on it (used but in good condition) and was too excited to wait. Plus we don’t really have anywhere to hide it for that long without me accidentally finding it anyway.
I’m still learning how to use it but it’s been fun so far. My first two shots (yesterday) weren’t great, my third (today) turned out a lot better, and my fourth was nearly perfect. Still too inconsistent to be confident yet but I’m enjoying the learning process. I’ve heard the GCP is user upgradable, I may look into that in the future. I’ve read that upgrading the over pressure valve is a big upgrade, as is a brass boiler, but that’s for future me to think about, right now I still want to learn how to use it. I’ve also read about Gaggimate and Gaggiuino which seem really interesting. Again, I’ll do that rabbit hole in the future. I know there’s lots of gadgets and stuff for espresso too, that’s something else I’ll want to get into in the future, but for right now I’m really having fun just trying to figure out pull time, heat up time, grind size, etc. My wife is also having a ton of fun with it.
Also, I know there’s no scale in the picture but I do use one, I just figured the picture would look nicer staged like this.
Since you got that used there is a chance that it has the older spring style pressure valve, which you can just adjust yourself. I did it to the used one I bought years ago, it was very easy.
https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/blogs/the-reading-room/gaggia-classic-opv-adjustment
I’ve heard that’s a pretty important upgrade, I was planning on doing it soon. Glad to hear it’s an easy upgrade.
If you have the model I'm talking about it isn't even an upgrade, it's just an adjustment. There's tools you need if you want it to be perfectly exact, but eyeballing it worked fine for me.
The newer ones you have to buy a replacement part though.