Coffee Appreciation

You could try a puck screen to help the water distribution

Nice grinder! I have the same machine, same woes with channeling - always at the edge at about 10 o'clock (if the handle were 6.00).

Realise I'm quite late to tag along this discussion, but definitely do get a blank basket and get w descaling session in - the former should be quite regular (according to how often you use your machine of course), the latter will depend of where you are (if in London, very often).

I say this as I'm just about to put my Classic back together after removing solenoid valve and boiler and running a VERY long overdue descale and full clean after I started having issues with flow. Backflushing helped short term but clearly there were more issues. Looking inside the boiler answered my question.

I know it might all sound obvious and trite, but as someone who's always put off routine maintenance stuff like that, I know I won't make the same mistakes again after seeing the state things got to!

Also re the distribution, a cocktail stick does work well and I used one for a while. That made me want one of those fancy looking tools with a wooden handle and wirey legs, which I ordered off AliExpress along with a magnetic funnel to avoid spillage. all came to around a tenner and I'd say it has made a positive difference with consistency. Next step will be a fancier basket like an ISM Competizione or a VST. Machine came already PID'd and 9 bar'd so can't comment on the importance of those.