coffee – Quan Mai's blog

“There is no too clean espresso machine”. That is my favorite quote when it comes to cleaning espresso machines and equipment. When you use your machine, the coffee ground and oil build up, and it can, and will affect the taste of your espresso. Why spend thousands of USD buying fancy machines, and few dozens for each bag of specialty coffee, without getting the best out of it.

Property cleaning and maintaining machine is also helping to prolong your machine and increase your enjoyment of using it.

For every machine

Keep your group head clean after each use. There are several ways of doing that, and you can do a combination of them that you like best

Draw some hot water from the group head with an empty portafilter to clean any debris remaining
Use a paper filter or a puck screen. This prevents the coffee ground from being attached to the group head.

Wipe the group head with a wet cloth (preferably microfiber) after the shot
Use this fancy tool from Espazzola to clean it up.

You will also need to backflush – i.e. using a blind basket – a basket without holes so water can’t be escaped. It will flow back to the machine and escape through the OPV (over pressure valve), bringing with it any coffee ground and oil that is inside the group head. Each type of group head needs a different backflush schedule – more on that later.

For milk wand

Purge the wand before each use.
Wipe the wand right after frothing. Immediately if your is not non burn – i.e. it gets very hot to touch. Otherwise the milk will be baked and is very hard to remove.
Purge the wand as soon as possible after each froth.
If your milk wand has removable tip, remove it once every month to check for blockages

For equipment

If you are using a bottomless portafilter, either wipe it or rinse it under running water after each use to remove any stuck coffee ground. One quick way to check if the basket is clean is to use a household paper to wipe it. If it comes out clean, you are good. If it comes out black – you need to clean a bit more.

If you are using the normal portafilter with sprout, pop the basket out and clean both it the portafilter (if you have never done it, you might be surprised, yuck!). This is also one of the reason I’d prefer the bottomless.

Every week, soak your equipment that have been in contact with coffee ground in a detergent that can clean coffee oil. I recommend to use puly caff as it’s effective, safe (it’s NSF-certified), and cheap to use. Add 10gr of pulycaff to 1 liter of hot water, stir it well then soak your equipment for 15 minutes, then clean and rinse them thoroughly.

For Integrated/saturated group head

Those group heads can be backflush as many times as needed.

Once every week, use 3-4gr of pulycaff in a blind basket, and draw a few shots until the pulycaff is dissolved, then draw a few more until the water in blind basket is “clean”. Remove the blind basket, and draw a few more shots without the portafilter locked in.
Every 3 months, or less, open the shower head and clean it. (tip: make sure that the group head is cooled down and completely comfortable to touch. it can retain heat for a long time)
Change your gasket every year if it is rubber (as it degrades with heat), or every other year if it is silicone. That is just the guideline, check if it is hard and has lost its elasticity.

For E61 group head

E61 group head needs lubing with food grade silicone grease, and backflushing with pulycaff washing that away, so you need to be conservative about that. Instead:

Backflush with water only after the final shot of the day.
Backflush with pulycaff every other month, then grease your lever. If you do not, your lever will be squeaky, it will feel tight to open/close, and it will wear much faster.
Open your shower head every week and clean it up. Use a spoon and gently remove the shower head. If you have a hardened rubber tool to avoid scratches, even better.
Change your gasket every year if it is rubber (as it degrades with heat), or every other year if it is silicone. That is just the guideline, check if it is hard and has lost its elasticity.

Descaling

Limescale is the #1 enemy of espresso machine, especially for dual boilers ones with the steam boiler – as the water boils, it leaves the remaining mineral behind, the TDS in the water increases, and the chance for limescale build up gets higher.

If your water is relatively soft, always use the water softener and change it when it is used up.
If your tap water is very hard, you might need some other options instead of using it directly. You might have to use distilled water + added mineral (distilled water does not taste good, and it can also be harmful with electronic component in the boilers. Certain sensors rely on the ions available in the water to work (properly).
Draw 200ml of water from the hot water tap to increase the water exchange, use that for heat your cup. Don’t draw too much as it can expose the heating element to the air and fry it. This ensure that your steam boiler gets fresh water every day, avoid high concentration.
Descale according to the manufacturer guideline. NOTE: be more cautious if one or both of your boilers are brass, as descaling chemical can cause harm to them.

Routines

Each use

Draw some water from steam boiler if you have dual boilers

Clean group head and portafilter

Wipe and purge milk wand

Wipe splashes of coffee (from channeling) or milk (from frothing) if any

Every day

For E61: backflush with water only after last pull of the day

Weekly (or every 3 days, depends on our usage)

Soak portafilter, basket etc. in pulycaff solution, and clean them thoroughly

Clean the dip tray

For saturated group head: backflush with pulycaff

For E61: remove and clean shower head

Every other week

Clean water tank with some disk soap, rinse it thoroughly

Every other month

For E61: backflush with pulycaff, then lubricate the lever

Every 3 months

For saturated group head: remove and clean the shower head

For E61 with flow control: lubricate the o rings of the flow control

Every year

Check gasket and replace if they become hard

Remove cover and check for internal for any sign of leaks

Every other year

Consider descaling if necessary

Making espressos, and espresso-based drinks at home is not about the joy of a hobby, but also an economic way of drinking high quality coffee. Let’s talk about it.

An espresso at a cafe costs around 30kr, while a big latte costs around 45kr.

if you drink twice a day, your and your partner would cost between 120kr and 180kr

Assuming you drink 300 days a year – then each year, it’s around 36.000kr and 54.000kr for coffee 😮

Now if you are making espressos at home.

Each double shot espresso needs about 18gr of coffee, but we have to consider waste and throw away (for example when you dial a new coffee), so let’s be conservative and assume that 1kg of coffee makes around 45 shots.

A good 1kg of coffee is between 250kr to 400kr (specialty grade – and that is usually much better than what you are served in a normal cafe). So it’s about 5.5 to 8.9kr for coffee for each drink.

A big latte needs around 250ml of milk (including waste and throw away), so each 1.5l of milk can make 6 latte. A 1.5l of Arla standard 3% milk costs 17.9kr (as we always buy at Willys), so it’s 3kr per drink for milk.

Of course you need electricity for heating up the machine. My machine which is an E61 uses around 0.6 kwh-0.7 kwh per day for 4 lattes. Electricity price has gone up a bit, we are quite lucky to only have to pay a fixed price of 1.3kr/kwh, but let’s say you have to pay a bit more, 1.5kr/kwh, it’s 1kr per day for the machine.

And you need other things for cleaning and maintenance – you need water softener. I used Lelit 70l water softener which costs around 110kr/each, and I change every 2 months, which means almost 2kr/day. I also need pulycaff for cleaning machines and other stuffs, but after 2 years I haven’t gone through 1 bottle of 900gr yet (costs around 150kr), so the cost is very minimal.

Basically, it’s 22-36kr per coffee per day, 12kr per milk per day, 1kr electricity per day, and 2kr per cleaning per day, it’s around 37kr- 51kr per day for 4 lattes.

Now you have coffees at home and you will drink more often, let’s say it’s 365 days per year because you also have friends come over, it’s 12,410kr to 18,615kr.

Even with some fancy machines and equipment to start with, you would be break even in one year. That includes things like fancy cups, WDT, scale etc.

Cost	Buying	Making
Machine cost	N/A	10.000kr – ∞
Per drink	30-45kr	8.5-12.5kr
Drinks per year	4x per day, 3 days	4x per day, 365 days
Cost for coffee	36000-54000kr	12410kr-18615kr

Some might argue that the making espressos also costs time, but you also need to walk down the street (assuming that you have a cafe right around corner) and wait for your coffee. Also need to factor the time to put on/off clothes.

Not to mention the relaxing feeling when brewing espressos is priceless.

Of course those numbers only apply if you drink coffees frequently. Things will change if you drink less, or more, or without milk.

Tag: coffee

Cleaning/maintaining routine for espresso machines