Keeping your coffee machine is quite a important thing. Seen your customers do see your coffee machine and coffee grinders, it does not look good when they see a greasy and stained espresso machine. Besides the fact that you also have a lot of filth you can’t see as a customer on the inside of the machines.
For that reason you have various cleaning procedures, which need to be done in some cases on a daily basis or in regular intervals. You can divide the cleaning procedures into 2 categories. The espresso machine and the other one the coffee grinder.
Espresso machine cleaning
Getting your espresso machine cleaned might be one of the most important things to get a good espresso or a ristretto. Seen when you have dirty machine, you will never be able to get the best flavours from your coffee.
Backflushing the brewing group with a blindfilter
This is a procedure you need to do every single day, when you have used your espresso machine, that is backflushing the brewing group. This is done to clean the internals of the brewing group, as well as the solenoid valve. So in the case you have a manual operated brewing group, such as a E61 brewing group, you do also need to do this. Seen it cleans the internals of the group head.
How do I backflush? Well first off all remove the filterbasket from the portafilter and install a blind filter. Now you can add a cleaning detergent, such as Puly caff or Brooks cleaning tablets. Install the portafilter again and start the brewing procedure and start and stop this a couple of times manually, in some cases there is a cleaning option on a espresso machine which does do this automatically. When this procedure has been completed remove the portafilter and repeat is without a cleaning solution, so that there is no trace of any detergent.
Cleaning your steam tube and milk frother
Cleaning the milk system of your espresso machine is really important to get the best frothed up milk. Otherwise it can be possible that the holes of your steam tube get blocked because of the dried up milk. Besides that it is also very unhygienic when you have tried up milk remains in your steam tube or milk frother, seen this can cause the growth of mould.
You can clean your steam tube by taking a milk pitcher and fill it with water. Add a small amount of Brooks Milkcleaner and let the steam tube soak in the solution. You can also purge with steam to let the solution do it’s job a bit better. You can wipe off the milk residues easily after this. When you are done rinse the steam tube with just drinking water without any
Descaling to remove limescale from your coffee machine
Keeping your espresso machine free of limescale is virtually impossible, you can start with the use of a water filter. But you will always get the buildup of limescale on the heating elements and boiler of the espresso machine, it will only take longer.
In most cases when the limescale becomes a issue you need to dismantle your espresso machine and descale the individual parts. When you don’t have that much limescale you can use the Brooks Greenie descaler. But when the scale buildup is severe we advice the use the Calcinet descaler.
Portafilter cleaning
It is likely that it is not the first thing which comes to mind, but below the filter basket there will be some accumulation of coffee grease. This is the case as well for the coffee spout, where the coffee runs true.
To clean your portafilter is quite a easy procedure. First off all remove the filterbasket, this can easily be done with the IMS removal tool. Fill a bucket with Puly caff and warm water, and put the head of the portafilter in this bucket. Never submerge the handle of the portafilter in the water.
Let the portafilter soak for a couple of hours and remove the portafilter from the bucket. Now you can use a microfibre cloth or a brush to clean the fatty coffee residues from the inside of the portafilter. For cleaning the coffee spouts it is ideal to have a small brush such as the Brooks Nylon cleaning brushes. Afterwards rinse with clean water and install the filterbasket again.
Keeping your coffee grinder clean
If you keep the internals of your coffee grinder clean, it does not matter if you have a On Demand coffee grinder or a Doser grinder, old coffee does not give a good espresso. There are various methods to keep your coffee grinder clean.
Cleaning grinding burrs on your coffee grinder
You won’t expect it that fast, but you also need to clean the coffee grinding burrs. This can be done by taking the coffee grinder apart. But you can also do that with Puly Grind crystals. Just run 1 satchel true the coffee grinder and it removes all the old coffee grinds from the grinding chamber. Use a brush in the coffee doser. When there is a lot of old coffee in the grind chamber, remove the coffee manually. Seen it does not work otherwise.
Coffee hopper cleaning
The disadvantage of coffee is that the beans can be quite fatty, This results at some point that your coffee hopper starts to discolour into a light brown colour. You can prevent this by cleaning your hopper on the inside in regular intervals. Puly has made a special cleaning solution for that, The Puly Hopper cleaner. This product can be sprayed on and wiped off, without any rinsing afterwards.
Cleaning products from Brooks
At Brooks we sell a variety of cleaning products which can be used on domestic and commercial espresso machines. Which range from products from Puly Caff and Repa to our own cleaning products. If you are not entirely sure which one you need, don’t hesitate to contact us.
