If the coffee at home doesn't taste good, quite often it's because the coffee machine hasn't been cleaned. Cleaning the espresso machine is quick and is a prerequisite for delicious coffee. Coffee oils, in particular, accumulate in the coffee machine, making the coffee taste rancid and unpleasant. We'll show you how to clean it quickly and easily.
What makes the espresso machine dirty?
Coffee consists of cellulose, proteins, acids, and other substances, including 7 to 17% oils depending on the variety. These oils love to accumulate in the shower screen, the portafilter spout, under the gasket, and generally in every available crevice. Quite quickly, these oils turn rancid and give the coffee a sharp, overpowering taste.
The coffee itself readily sticks together with the old oil in the form of tiny particles, extracting bitterly. All in all: very, very unappetizing!
While the fat mainly tastes bad, the milk wand is a real hygiene problem. This is because bacteria love to have a mold party there.
Daily and interim cleaning
- Before each espresso extraction, briefly flush the machine once without the portafilter. This removes residues from the last shot from the brewing screen. Practical: older coffee machine models also level their brewing temperature this way.
- Always wipe the screen in the portafilter with a cloth before grinding new coffee into it. This prevents coffee from being brewed multiple times and thus becoming extremely bitter.
- If you make a lot of coffee, it's worth occasionally inserting the "blind filter" and performing an empty shot to backflush. Simply attach the portafilter with the blind filter and draw water for 10 seconds, as you would for normal coffee brewing. If you are unsure how to do this, watch our video on cleaning espresso machines.
- Before and after each milk frothing, you should purge the steam wand. Simply turn on the steam vigorously once. This removes water from the wand and you get steam as it should be. Very important: also wipe the milk wand with a clean cloth before and after each frothing.
This may sound like a lot of effort, but it quickly becomes a habit once you start. And so your machine is clean every day. Provided you also do the weekly cleaning. 😊
Weekly cleaning or after heavy coffee use
Stubborn deposits cannot be removed so easily. For this, degreaser is the method of choice.
For weekly cleaning, you will need the following materials:
- Coffee degreaser
- Blind filter or rubber insert
- Group head brush
- Container for soaking – ideally a 1l milk pitcher
- Clean cloth
Here's how to do the weekly cleaning:
- Remove the portafilter. Remove the filter basket and replace it with a blind filter. Alternatively, a sealing rubber insert that covers all holes can be used. A blind filter has the advantage of closing very cleanly and allowing the brew screen to be soaked at the same time.
- Place half an espresso spoon of degreaser into the blind filter. This is sufficient for almost all products from almost all manufacturers. Of course, manufacturers recommend larger quantities, so you'll repurchase sooner.
- Insert the portafilter and build up pressure 10 times for about 10 seconds by pressing a brewing button or operating the lever of your espresso machine. When the brewing stops, the cleaning water flows back into the drip tray. The shower screen, gasket, and openings are cleaned. This process is called backflushing.
- After ten shots, rinse the blind filter and repeat the procedure with only water. This will remove any remaining cleaning agent.
- Then empty and clean the drip tray so that the cleaning water does not attack the plastic.
- You can push out the shower screen on many Faema E61 group heads with a spoon. Some machine types require a screwdriver for this. Place the brew screen, the shower screen, and the portafilter (below the handle) with degreaser in the 1l milk pitcher (for about 15 minutes). Then rinse everything under clear water.
We recommend not drinking the first espresso after cleaning. But already with the second one, you will notice how good coffee from a clean espresso machine tastes.
If you have any questions about the process, write to us or watch the video on cleaning the espresso machine on YouTube.
Also clean the coffee grinder
After cleaning the espresso machine, we also recommend cleaning the espresso grinder. Only then will you truly taste the "cleaning success."
