u/DickPictureson

I am using IMS double basket made for 14-18g of coffee with dark roast.
Grinder is K-ultra.
I dose 17g of coffee since its the highest I could go so that showerhead does not touch the puck and I add thin puckscreen on top.

With the medium-light roast I did not get such a crazy deviation but with dark roast I got now 8g of difference with the same settings.
First shot 31g in 30, 2nd shot was 21g in 30.
With medium-light roast I got 2g difference and its due to puck prep difference + K ultra is not really ideal for espresso.

I do the distrubution of the grounds the Lance Hedrick way - just hitting portafilter from side to side to make sure its all well distributed.

The only thing that changed is the fact that this time I pushed portafilter a bit closer to the locking area at 18:00.
Since I have a new espresso machine the lock is really hard to lock in so my normal area is locking it around 19:00, this time I could lock it close to 18:00.

Can it be that by locking it too hard I decreased the distance between the puck and showerhead to the point that it finally touched the puck and created more resistance than usual?

I am thinking to ordering the spinning WDT tool with many needles that does the same movement over and over as hitting with the hand is too random and cannot guarantee similar results from shot to shot.

I got mine last week and not without the issues.
If your drip tray metal mesh and metal stand do not fit together, instead of sending it back to Lelit, you could put the stand into the freezer to reduce metal size and it will lock in place.
To reduce the vibration during the extraction, I pull the drip tray metal mesh towards myself, if its close towards machine I get more vibration.

On newer machine ( made on 03/2026 ) opv valve is not glued but covered with some material to prevent water leak, I used the fan to make it warm and moved the opv valve with 4 - screw.

Adjustment is needed at 9,5 bar as if you backflush you get 0,5 extra bar pressure, regular pressure during normal extraction will be exactly 9 bar unless there is issued with you puck or its too fine, you will get peak at 9,5 bar.

Before you take the machine apart, make sure to be gentle with the top cover of the machine since they stopped using glue or tape to hold the rubber gasket in place, it will fall appart and its a huge pain to get it back as it was in stock, I had to trim it and use tapes myself to hold the gasket in place.

I had issued with water leaking as I was too gentle with machine and portafiler was not properly sealed, I suggest locking portafiler as hard as you can to the point when machine starts moving.

I am thinking to get Gaggia e24 or maybe Sage Bambino or maybe go manual and get Cafelat Robot.

I mostly drink medium,medium-dark specialty beans, sometimes I even enjoy dark roasts and even italian roasts.

Milk drinks are not my concern as I mostly enjoy pure espresso.

I currently have the Outin Nano pro barista edition and it performs well for the beans I use, but I feel like there is much more quality in more expensive machines.
I pair it with Izipresso K-ultra and it does well for the most part.

What should I consider? I am biased to get Cafelat Robot since its highly regarded by Lance Hedrick and James Hoffman as a great machine that can make great coffee, especially for medium or dark roasts.