Cleaning your espresso machine – simple and quick

If your coffee doesn't taste good at home, it's often because the coffee machine isn't clean. Cleaning your espresso machine is quick and easy, and it's essential for delicious coffee. Coffee oils in particular build up in the machine, and the coffee starts to taste rancid and bitter. We'll show you how to clean your espresso machine quickly and easily.

What makes an 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 settle in the shower screen, the portafilter outlet, under the seal and basically in every available crevice. Before long, these oils taste rancid and overpower the coffee taste with a bitter flavor.

The coffee itself tends to stick together with old oil in tiny particles and extracts bitter notes. All in all: very, very unappetizing!

While the fat mainly tastes bad, the steam wand is a real hygiene issue. Because bacteria love to throw a mold party there.

Daily cleaning and maintenance

1. Before every espresso extraction, flush once without the portafilter. This removes the residue from the last shot from the brew screen. Handy: older coffee machine models also level their brewing temperature this way.
2. Always wipe the basket in the portafilter with a cloth before grinding new coffee into it. This prevents coffee from being brewed multiple times and becoming extremely bitter.
3. If you're making lots of coffees, it's also worth putting in the "blind basket" between shots and doing an empty shot to backflush. Simply insert the portafilter with the blind basket and run water for 10 seconds, as you would for a normal coffee extraction. If you're unsure how to do this, check out our Video on cleaning your espresso machine.
4. Before every milk steaming session and after every milk steaming session, you should purge the steam wand. Just turn up the steam forcefully once. This removes water from the wand and gives you steam as it should be. Very important: also wipe the steam wand with a clean cloth before every steaming and after every steaming.

This might sound like a lot of work, but it quickly becomes a habit once you get started. And that way your machine is clean every day. Provided you also do the weekly cleaning. 😊

Weekly cleaning or after heavy coffee days

Stubborn deposits don't come off so easily. For this, degreaser is the tool of choice.

For weekly cleaning you need the following materials:

• Coffee degreaser
• Blind basket or rubber insert
• Brew group brush
• Container for soaking – ideally a 1l milk pitcher
• Clean cloth

Here's how to do the weekly cleaning:

1. Remove the portafilter. Remove the basket and replace it with the blind basket. Alternatively, you can use a sealing rubber insert that covers all the holes. A blind basket has the advantage that it seals really well and at the same time allows the brew screen to be soaked.
2. Put half an espresso spoon of degreaser on the blind basket. This is enough for almost all products from almost all manufacturers. Of course, manufacturers recommend larger quantities because then you buy replacements faster.
3. Insert the portafilter and build up pressure 10 times for approximately 10 seconds each by pressing a shot button or operating the lever of your espresso machine. When you release the shot, the cleaning water flows back into the drip tray. The shower screen, seal and openings are cleaned. This procedure is called backflushing.
4. After ten shots, rinse out the blind basket and repeat the procedure again with just water. This removes any remaining cleaning solution.
5. Then empty and clean the drip tray so the cleaning water doesn't attack the plastic.
6. You can press out the shower screen on many Faema E61 brew groups with a spoon. With some machine types you need a screwdriver for this. Soak the brew screen, shower and 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 on the second shot you'll notice how good coffee from a clean espresso machine tastes.

If you have questions about the process, write to us or check out our Video on cleaning your espresso machine on youtube.

Also clean your coffee grinder

After cleaning your espresso machine, we recommend also cleaning your espresso grinder right away. Only then will you really notice the "cleaning success".