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Ideally you'd be able to tell us how much weighed coffee you used?
I don't know how much control there is on a Classic, but a few things you can do to increase shot time:
Tamp harder. A firmer, more compacted puck is harder for water to penetrate.
Increase dose. The more coffee, the harder the water has to work to get through.
Increase pre-infusion time. When you pre-infuse for longer, the puck becomes more saturated with water, hence the rest of your water has to work harder to get through.
But yes, you're gonna have far, far, far better results with a non-pressurized basket, grinder and good beans.
JB-
I knew the weight question would come up! Unfortuntely no, given it was my first shot with this machine I followed the instructions to the letter and 2 heaped teaspoons was the dose recommended per shot. I'd assume the dose was in the region of 15 - 20g.
How would one go about pre-infusing on a machine like the classic? From what I can tell it's either pushing water through or it's not. Is it like a quick blast of water into the puck and then stopping for a while before recommencing?
I have a grinder en route and will be getting a non-pressurized filter shortly! In the meantime though I'll try to up the dose and increase the tamp as well as pre-infusing. I'm only drinking it in milk for the timebeing anyway until my ground supplies are used up.
mf
Thanks all for your advice so far. My Classic arrived today and I've just flushed it through and then made my first espresso with it; this is where more advice would be great!
Using the standard pressurized basket and 'standard' ground coffee (3 rounded teaspoons gently tamped), the flow was WAY quicker than I expected (15secs max to fill a small cup), and when I took the portafilter out, the coffee was saturated to the point where there was a good mm deep of water in the basket on top of the puck.
Am I doing something wrong or have my expectations been set too high (courtesy of James Hoffman) until I have a non-pressurized basket, hand grinder and beans?