theharte Senior Member Joined: 9 Oct 2011 Posts: 3 Location: Belfast Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011, 12:32pm Subject: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
Hi all, I hope you can help !
I have a Gaggia Titanium espresso machine ..... Really love this !
Anyway, went away on holiday and came home to find a lot of flies in the kitchen. Didn't know where these came from ...... Until I went to use the coffee machine !
I opened up the machine and realised I didn't clean it out the last time I used it. The coffee grinds had gone mouldy and there were small maggots crawling around at the bottom of the used grinds bin in the machine.
I have cleaned it out thoroughly and ran a couple of rinse cycles but there are still flies coming from somewhere in the machine.
The thought of the maggots is making me heave ..... Any ideas how I can be sure the machine is cleaned out ?
Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011, 4:23pm Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
theharte Said:
Hi all, I hope you can help !
I have a Gaggia Titanium espresso machine ..... Really love this !
Anyway, went away on holiday and came home to find a lot of flies in the kitchen. Didn't know where these came from ...... Until I went to use the coffee machine !
I opened up the machine and realised I didn't clean it out the last time I used it. The coffee grinds had gone mouldy and there were small maggots crawling around at the bottom of the used grinds bin in the machine.
I have cleaned it out thoroughly and ran a couple of rinse cycles but there are still flies coming from somewhere in the machine.
The thought of the maggots is making me heave ..... Any ideas how I can be sure the machine is cleaned out ?
You have fly eggs in the machine. Get a bottle of cheap vodka and soak the machine in it. Let it sit for about a day, then throw the machine out and drink the vodka. Should be coffee flavored. Anything floating in it would surely be dead by then.
Len
"Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water." ~The Women's Petition Against Coffee, 1674
Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011, 9:38pm Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
CoffeeRoastersClub Said:
You have fly eggs in the machine. Get a bottle of cheap vodka and soak the machine in it. Let it sit for about a day, then throw the machine out and drink the vodka. Should be coffee flavored. Anything floating in it would surely be dead by then.
Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011, 9:41pm Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
theharte Said:
Hi all, I hope you can help !
I have a Gaggia Titanium espresso machine ..... Really love this !
Anyway, went away on holiday and came home to find a lot of flies in the kitchen. Didn't know where these came from ...... Until I went to use the coffee machine !
I opened up the machine and realised I didn't clean it out the last time I used it. The coffee grinds had gone mouldy and there were small maggots crawling around at the bottom of the used grinds bin in the machine.
I have cleaned it out thoroughly and ran a couple of rinse cycles but there are still flies coming from somewhere in the machine.
The thought of the maggots is making me heave ..... Any ideas how I can be sure the machine is cleaned out ?
Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011, 10:11pm Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
At a local commercial roaster (now, sadly, out of business) there was a fellow who did repairs on and off site. He could fix anything- refrigeration to pinball machines, and ANYTHING espresso. He would take in old machines, fix them up, and then they would go to clients who were on contract for their coffee. He said the first thing, before a machine ever came into the shop, he would put it in a large plastic bag, spray in a bunch of Raid, and seal the bag for a few days, He said only rarely would there not be piles of dead baby roaches in the bag afterwards. Suddenly, flies don't sound so bad.
Easiest temporary cure. Put the machine in a black plastic bag and leave it out in the sun for a couple of days. The heat will kill off what is left. Then all you have to do is keep shaking the machine till the dead flies and maggots stop falling out.
Un latte de mosca, con gusanos en el lado por favor.
calblacksmith Moderator Joined: 25 Nov 2007 Posts: 5,772 Location: Riverside, Ca, U.S.A. Expertise: I live coffee
Espresso: ECM Veneziano A1 Grinder: Many different commercial Vac Pot: 40s era Silex Drip: Milita, Bunn&Curtis... Roaster: Cast iron pan, gas burner
Posted Mon Oct 10, 2011, 6:25am Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
If you don't want to go the route of the booz, lol, I would go along with a composite of the above advice.
Put the machine in a black plastic bag, put it in the sun for a few days then take it out of the bag, take the machine apart as far as you can, clean the bean hopper, grinder, grounds bin and water chamber. It is likely a through cleaning is due anyway.
Once everything is clean, you should be OK. I have had grounds left in my drip machine before and gone away on vacation. When I came back, it was really nasty but no flies!
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
jlhsupport Senior Member Joined: 22 Oct 2010 Posts: 85 Location: Lafayette, IN Expertise: Professional
Posted Mon Oct 10, 2011, 6:48am Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
Yes, disassemble as much as you can. If you have an air compressor, make an air wand with a 1/4 inch tip and blast all you can right out of there. The air wand will come in handy later as well for any other projects you have.
Just a few months back, we received a Silvia at our shop for service, which was supposed to be just for a complete boiler and 3-way valve disassembly for descale and deep cleaning. I am so thankful that my newbie tech was the one who had to work on her. When he opened the shipping box, he told me to come check it out because something didn't look right. Sure enough, we saw some bugs in the box which were identified as cockroaches. Immediately, we took everything outside, and luckily it wasn't raining that day. There were only 2 in the box, so we thought maybe they crawled their way inside or something and that we were out of the woods.
Sure enough, when my tech started taking the panels off, he saw one run up beneath the boiler, behind the 3-way. When he dug a little deeper, over 2 dozen poured out, and he was in a frantic, search and destroy mode. Needless to say, we promptly did a full vacuum of the shop area and adjacent rooms and picked up a bunch of roach traps.
This may have added to the labor charge that was to be the cleaning fee, but we were at least nice enough to not charge for all the roach baits, and even gave a friendly call to advise the customer to contact an exterminator. As it turns out, when one of our team members spoke with her, she stated that she had seen some roaches recently, but hadn't given it too much thought. There were juvenile and adult roaches in that Silvia, so we said she urgently needed to get that addressed for her own health and safety.
Posted Mon Oct 10, 2011, 7:59am Subject: Re: HELP !! Maggots / Flies in coffee machine !
Anecdotal: As a firefighter I went on a call to a home that could have been cleaner... There were dirty dishes in the sink in the kitchen and on the counter and there were roaches on the counter as well. Then I realized that they might have been pets, because all the lights in the kitchen were on and it was very bright in there, but the roaches were just hanging out, "sunning" themselves. We went down the dark hall (no lights on), and I thought to myself, "Why don't they vacuum, pick up a bit. Look at the nails in the wall. Why don't they hang some pictures?" Then I realized that nails don't have legs. They were flies. Looked down at the floor and tapped the firefighter with the medical response bag next to me and pointed his attention towards the floor. He had put the bag down at his feet, and there was a roach crawling towards it.
And then, speaking of flies, there was the suicide victim, in a car, summer weather (90+), a few days, and the arriving firefighters wondered why even the windshield, along with all the other windows, were totally blacked out. I'll stop there.
So if you take in or buy a used machine, be wary about from where it came.
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