geertdevries Senior Member Joined: 6 Mar 2007 Posts: 27 Location: Netherlands Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Tue Mar 6, 2007, 3:10am Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
Cleaning the grouphead is indeed important. But I like to minimize the work. In my experience (for a home machine) this works well: - don't leave your used portafilter in the machine when you're finished making coffee - clean the portafilter with water right away after a pull - let some water run through the grouphead after pulling a shot - backflush the grouphead with a professional cleaner every 3 months
When you do this all the time, you don't have to screw the whole machine apart!
ThatCoffeeGuy Senior Member Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 880 Location: Kalamazoo, MI Expertise: Pro Barista
Espresso: NS at shop, nothing at home Grinder: NS MDX, NS MCF (home), Bunn... Vac Pot: Yama Tabletop Drip: Chemex Roaster: Behmor 1600, FR-8, Popper,...
Posted Tue Mar 6, 2007, 11:28am Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
geertdevries Said:
Cleaning the grouphead is indeed important. But I like to minimize the work. In my experience (for a home machine) this works well: - don't leave your used portafilter in the machine when you're finished making coffee - clean the portafilter with water right away after a pull - let some water run through the grouphead after pulling a shot - backflush the grouphead with a professional cleaner every 3 months
When you do this all the time, you don't have to screw the whole machine apart!
Granted we are doing the volume in a day that you are probably doing in a year, but, at the shop I work at, we try to run a Cafiza backflush twice a day, with multiple plain water backflushes throughout the day, and we run a cooling flush before every shot, so that helps get some of the oils gathered by the 3-way out as well. Even with all of this, at the end of the day after I have sent the groups through 20 cycles with espresso machine cleaner, and 10 cycles with plain water, there is still a lot of oils trapped between the dispersion plate and the screen and the dispersion plate and the main part of the group.
If you have never taken your machine apart this way I think you will be in for a shock when/if you do. If you have taken your machine apart before and you didn't find any oils then perhaps your maintenance schedule is enough that you don't really need to, but I would definitely throw caution to what you said being true in every case, or even most cases.
As a side note, I would just like to say that the best thing I have found for removing oils from P/F's, screens, and dispersion plates is actually nothing more than Dawn Power Dissolver. It has a strong chemical odor so you really have to make sure that you allow sufficient amounts of water to run over the parts before you brew any shots, otherwise you will get that taste in your shots, but seriously, it works so great that it is worth a little extra soaking time to get the chemical odor out. Give it a shot, it works great!
HTH -Bry
Bryan Wray
"I just hope that people realize that coffee is not just a caffeine delivery service, it can be a culinary art." -Christopher Owens
Noonievut Senior Member Joined: 9 Sep 2006 Posts: 461 Location: Toronto. Canada Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Brasilia Club Grinder: Rocky DL Vac Pot: Other - Aeropress Roaster: Behmor
Posted Mon Apr 30, 2007, 8:21am Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
lol...
I was cleaning a used machine I had just picked up on the weekend, so I remove the screw and dispersion screen, start soaking it, run some water and a plate? falls off into my glass. I panick at wondering what just happened, but it ended up that this part was so dirty that it was stuck the part above it (which doesn't come off). Took a long time to clean these, but now they're nice an shiny!
LambrettaMan Senior Member Joined: 5 Aug 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Tucson, AZ Expertise: I love coffee
Espresso: Livia 90 / Europiccola Grinder: Macap
Posted Sun Aug 5, 2007, 1:14pm Subject: Re: A Screen Cleaning Shortcut
Wow!
Awesome shortcut. I bought my Livia 90 used and the screen simply would not come clean. I was thinking about getting a new one ... However, this tip and 5 minutes and it is clean as new.
Nightfall Senior Member Joined: 2 Feb 2007 Posts: 1 Location: Seattle(mostly) Expertise: Pro Barista
Posted Fri Feb 29, 2008, 8:52pm Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
Thank you. I've had problems with employers that didn't seem to realize keeping the machine clean is very very important. I'm going to us this as a way to help people realize that it's ok to clean and remove the group heads. I've never thought of oxi clean to get the corners clean, and I've spent may hours trying to get the last of the three year old gunk out of screens they would not replace.
bellagilla Senior Member Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Posts: 2 Location: Australia Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Tue Sep 1, 2009, 10:43pm Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
How thrilled I was to see the simple instructions on cleaning this important piece on the machine. I can't wait to get stuck into it and see what a difference it will make to the taste. Have been looking for instructions for ages as the instruction book was far too vague on the details. Coffee geek is the best site and forum we have ever come across in all the years we have had different espresso machines. Thank you all.
hburgcafe Junior Member Joined: 28 Sep 2009 Posts: 6 Location: Hattiesburg, MS Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Wed Sep 30, 2009, 10:40am Subject: Re: How to Clean a Dirty Grouphead
I also like to cut up one of those green scrubby pads into little rectangles to get inside the rim of the group. They seem to mould well to small areas without being to abrasive. (Of course never use on shiny metalic surfaces!)
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