Coffee Appreciation

I resurrected my gaggia classic last night, it had been sitting unused for over a year (maybe even 2 now) as it developed some annoying quirks and the waterflow was basically 3 or 4 sharp jets of water which cut straight through any puck I could make and I have a hunch my grinder lost its calibration so didn't seem able to grind fine enough to slow things down to pull a decent timed shot as well so I tinkered a bit ages ago with no joy then gave up.

But I'm on new migraine meds that i take every night before bed which make me feel like shit in the morning and I basically need a decent coffee to get myself into a human state before I can even think of getting to work and there's no decent coffeeshops within 3 miles of where I live so I thought I'd get it up and running again.

So I descaled it and then soaked all the bits in a strong puly caff solution (not sure if it's right but it says use hot water so I used hottest water temp from the tap and it barely shift anything, so i redid it with boiled water from the kettle and could then visibly see it effervescing away) so I managed to get 95% of the shit welded onto the shower screen and shower screen holder off and now flow looks much better through the holder itself and while the shower screen is still not perfect it's not as terrible as before.

I then removed the front of my mahlkonig vario grinder and fitted some shims I got sent from the guy who runs coffee forums to prevent it from moving settings while grinding. I then took the burrs apart to give them a clean and this morning I recalibrated the grinder to be back to factory settings but the sound it's making sounds a bit weak so I'm wondering if i might need to take it apart and look at the belt and make sure it's mounted correctly.

during my travels finding tutorials for all the above I also discovered you can now get a brass shower screen holder replacement which gives you much better thermal consistency than the alu one that comes as default and also IMS do "competition" level shower screens which improve the water flow tremendously according to the videos i've seen. so for £35 I should hopefully be at the point where the gaggia is working as best as it can without going down the pid route.