Well actually I have a sunbeam, which I don't think is much different to the Breville that Crashman, the original poster, had. In fact, I had a Breville, too, that developed the same problem. But look, I thought about what you said, and I got to thinking that I may be on the wrong track altogether. The problem could be that I am just putting way too much ground coffee in the group head handle, which is being caused by two reasons really. Firstly, these coffee machines that we buy from Big W etc come with a plastic tamping thing. The other problem is the instructions make it clear you have to tamp the coffee down - but I'm starting to think that to allow you to do that, you have to put in so much coffee that the machine starts to spit and splatter. So after reading what you had to say about only putting in enough coffee for one cup, I decided to put in about a teaspoon of ground coffee, about the same amount as one would use for a cup of instant coffee - and I tamped it down with the teaspoon. The result wasn't great, but at least the machine didn't spit and splutter - and the coffee was still ok.
