If they produce lever machines no more, why is this machine featured at all? GAGGIA still market some of their products as manual espresso machines. The reason behind this is that they feature a cream dial using which you have more control over the cream amount when making your delicious shot of espresso. The brand is included because of the highly influential role they played in developing the lever espresso machine.

The GAGGIA Classic is an attractive and sturdy machine for heavy every-day use. It comes with a pressurized portafiler and can take ese pods too. The unit also features a Turbo-frother and a hot water dispenser. The Classic is a commercial grade espresso maker that has been around for many decades. GAGGIA has changed many of its features since 1949 but kept it as one of their flagship products. The model in its present form is available since 1991.

Its attractive stainless-steel housing houses a powerful high-power pump and an aluminum-bodied boiler. The Turbo-frother makes frothing easier but does not provide a lot of microbubbles. You can replace the wand with an old-school one though. The boiler is a powerful unit that heats up pretty fast. If you decide to use your GAGGIA Classic with ese pods, you have less control over the overall quality of the shot since you cannot tamp or influence the fineness of the ground. Some changes have been made to it recently and its production moved to Romania, but users do not complain about a deterioration in espresso quality or lack of functionality.

The key to making a great espresso with this machine is definitely tamping. You need to know your ground and tamp it down well in a layered manner. Experiment using this method and you will come up with your own measures for an optimal espresso.

dimensions w/ lever: (hwd) 25 x 13 x 12 ” · net weight: 20 pounds

The Gaggia Classic is an appealing manual semi automatic espresso maker. It will give you nice and tasty shots of espresso and is really a good back-up machine even if you are a lever fanatic. Can be handy also for days when you just do not have the time or entertain many guests. Maybe you got guests that want coffee but do not fancy a lever or you just do not want to take the risk of them operating yours.