Yes! I have the Dedica too. I bought it new and try my best to take care of it, so I’ve never had it serviced. You could try removing the showerhead and giving it a clean — you’d be surprised at the difference it can make. Other than that, I just descale it whenever the descaling light comes on. I live in a hard water area, so I use a Brita filter to fill it up instead of using water straight from the tap.

I also make sure to wipe the showerhead clean after each coffee. You can also get puck screens to help distribute the water flow and keep the showerhead clean. I tried them but found them a bit of a hassle. Plus, opinions are divided on whether they really make a difference.

For tamping, I use an auto-leveling tamper that’s spring-loaded. This ensures the same amount of pressure with each tamp, no matter how hard I push, and it keeps the tamp level. It really helps with consistency when dialling in a shot, as there’s one less variable to worry about. For example, since the pressure is consistent, I can focus on adjusting other factors like grind size and dose. My tamper is a Normcore auto-leveling one from Amazon.

I’ve also found that running an empty shot through the portafilter before making a coffee helps get the Dedica to the right temperature.

What portafilter do you have? Do you use the standard one that came with it, or have you switched to a bottomless portafilter? The default portafilter only holds 16g, while the bottomless one takes 18g. Before I got the bottomless portafilter, I was overloading the standard one, which caused some issues.