So you have your espresso machine, and everything is working great. You have that going for you, which is nice. But sometimes you have to take care of things simply because. A li’l maintenance goes a long way in maintaining the life, and happiness of your machine. This also assures the machine that you care about it. This is an important relationship you see.
There are a myriad of maintenance-related things to do, but one of the most critical is to occasionally clean out the group head. How To Clean Your e-61 Group Head? “What’s a group head?” No no no no. Read this, then proceed. You’re back? Good. Depending on how often you use your machine, daily, multiple times daily (proper), or sporadically throughout the week, is how to judge when to clean out the group head. This is the easiest thing you can do and will greatly prolong the life of your machine and in turn, your happiness.
If you haven’t already, get your hands on some Cafiza tablets. They are alka-seltzer looking things that are like, well, alka-seltzer for your machine!
Let’s begin: take the portafilter out of the group head and remove the filter basket. If you are still using the one that came with your machine, that’s cool, but a future article here will tell you about how to improve your espresso-life even more with a filter basket upgrade. Spoiler!
Grab the “blank” or “blind” filter basket and pop it into your portafilter handle. Strange huh? You ever even touch that thing before? I know right? What is it even FOR!?!? Well, yer about ta learn. Your Cafiza tablets have arrived in the mail so put one (1) of them in the blank filter basket. Now twist ‘er up into the group head like you do every morning. Oh behave!
Your machine at this point should be up to temp and ready to pull shots, but instead, you’re in Cleaning Mode! Set a timer for two minutes and then let the water flow! Whaaaaaat!? Nothing’s coming out! Tranquilo! This is the intent of the blank basket. It recirculates the water back through the e-61, and cleans it of all the old crusty grinds and residual coffee oils. Gross!
The timer goes off, and that’s the First Session done! Now do it again for another two minutes. Do this cleaning cycle 3 times, and then pull the portafilter. There should be no evidence of the Cafiza tablet. It has done its job. Hooray for Cafiza!
Pop out the blank, and replace with your standard filter basket. Run some water through your machine to rinse out any Cafiza-Coffee-Oil residuals. Congratulations! You have performed important maintenance on your machine, and prolonged the life of its internal mechanisms and gaskets.
Life is good. Now have a coffee…