How to Best Maintain Your Coffee Machine
  • By Thijs Brooks
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    • How to Best Maintain Your Coffee Machine

    The Importance of Cleaning Your Coffee Machine

    Cleaning your coffee grinder is often one of the most overlooked tasks for any barista. However, it is essential to do this regularly. Fortunately, it is quite easy to clean your coffee machine, provided you do it safely and responsibly. To keep your machine clean, you need a wide range of cleaning products, which are discussed below.

    Why is Coffee Machine Maintenance Important?

    It is crucial to maintain your coffee machine, which mainly involves regular cleaning. Maintaining your coffee machine ensures that it stays clean and increases its lifespan. You can also perform preventive maintenance, which allows you to replace parts that may be starting to fail in time. This ensures you can always serve coffee to your customers, which is especially important if you run a coffee bar.

    Maintaining Your Coffee Machine is Not as Hard as it Seems!

    It is indeed not that difficult to maintain your espresso machine, but there is a difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic coffee machines. Maintaining a semi-automatic espresso machine is much easier due to the available space.

    When maintaining a Jura coffee machine, which is a fully automatic espresso machine, you'll find that the space inside the machines is quite limited. Having the right maintenance tools, such as proper tools and the right coffee machine cleaning products, makes a world of difference.

    What Do You Need to Maintain Your Coffee Machine?

    To maintain your coffee machine properly, you mainly need to work consistently. After using the machine for a day, make sure it is cleaned at the end of the day. Cleaning right away is often much easier than letting coffee residue build up over days or weeks.

    Descaling the Coffee Machine

    How you descale your coffee machine depends a bit on the type of espresso machine you have. There is a big difference between commercial espresso machines and machines designed for home use. The first rule is to always use a water filter. For machines with a fixed water connection, you can install one on the inlet pipe. If your machine has a water tank, always use a filter in the water tank to ensure the descaling intervals are much longer since the filter doesn’t remove all the limescale.

    Cleaning the Coffee Machine

    Daily cleaning of the coffee machine can be divided into two parts: cleaning the exterior and cleaning the group head(s).

    Cleaning the group head should be done at the end of each day before you take the machine out of service. This involves backflushing the group head with cleaning agents, cleaning the portafilter gasket with a brush, and soaking the filter holders and filter baskets in a bath of cleaning solution. This helps prevent additional maintenance and ensures that old coffee residues don’t affect the flavor of new espressos.

    It is also important to keep the exterior of the coffee machine and grinder clean, as a machine that looks greasy or covered in coffee stains doesn’t give a good impression.

    Cleaning the Milk System

    Keeping the steam wand or automatic milk frothing system clean is perhaps one of the most important cleaning tasks. Residual milk can mold in the lines, especially in automatic milk frothing systems.

    The best practice is to flush the milk frothing system daily with a milk cleaner, such as the Brooks Milk Cleaner. This prevents milk residue from causing mold, sour taste, or clogging the lines.

    Daily Maintenance

    You may not need to maintain your coffee machine every day if you keep it clean. However, there are some things you should regularly check:

    • Is the portafilter gasket sealing properly?
    • Is the drip tray draining properly?
    • Are the manual valves on the espresso machine operating smoothly?
    • Are there any signs of leaks?

    Additional Maintenance

    Additional maintenance for a coffee machine is generally not needed, but there are parts that need to be replaced periodically. These include, for example, the safety valve (every two years) and the shower screens and portafilter gaskets. Over time, the shower screen gets dirty, and the portafilter gaskets dry out (unless you use silicone portafilter gaskets).

    What Maintenance Products Do You Need?

    The cleaning products you need to clean your coffee machine depend partly on the type of espresso machine you have. Commercial espresso machines require different maintenance products than, for example, a Jura fully automatic coffee machine.

    The most important product is likely the group head cleaning solution, such as Puly Caff powder, which is used with a blind filter.

    Additionally, for cleaning the steam wands/cappuccino maker, a milk cleaner such as those from Puly or Brooks is essential. While it may seem expensive, repairs are much costlier than investing in cleaning products.

    Low-Maintenance Coffee Machines

    In almost all situations, the more complex the machine, the more complicated the maintenance. For example, a filter coffee maker like a Moccamaster is quite simple to maintain and requires less intensive care. If you have a semi-automatic coffee machine, such as a Rocket with an E61 group head, you’ll need to perform a bit more maintenance, but if done periodically, it’s manageable.

    Buy Maintenance Products at Brooks Parts

    At Brooks, we offer a wide range of cleaning products and maintenance supplies for a variety of espresso machines. Whether you have a fully automatic coffee machine or a commercial four-group espresso machine, we almost always have something suitable for your coffee machine. For more information on the best cleaning products for home baristas, check out our other blog posts.