Cleaning espresso machine: backflushen

To maintain the quality of your cup of coffee, it is also important to regularly clean or actually keep your espresso machine clean. You can do this by backflushen your espresso machine. How can you clean your espresso machine? We are happy to explain it to you.

CLEANING ESPRESSO MACHINE: BACKFLUSHEN

You do everything you can to make the perfect espresso; you weigh your coffee, make sure your espresso runs through in about 25 seconds. But do you also regularly clean your espresso machine? If you don’t clean your espresso machine, your coffee won’t taste good in the long run. Coffee contains oils that stick to the brew group of your espresso machine and in your portafilter.

Cleaning your portafilter is very easy. You can do this by removing the filter basket from your portafilter and rinsing your portafilter clean with hot water, you can also do this with your filter basket. After rinsing clean under hot water, dry the portafilter and filter basket with a tea towel. If your portafilter is very dirty (it has a black deposit in it) because you forgot to clean your espresso machine for a long time, you can fill a container with hot water and add espresso machine cleaning powder to it. This cleaning powder is a powerful degreaser that you also use when backflush your espresso machine. You can put your portafilter and filter basket in the hot water and let them soak for a while. After 10 minutes you can clean the portafilter with a brush and then rinse it well.

Cleaning espressomachine backflushen

BACKFLUSHEN

You can clean the brew group of your espresso machine with a blind filter basket; a blind filter. Cleaning the brew group of your espresso machine is also called backflushen.

  1. remove the filter basket with holes from your portafilter and put the blind filter in your filter carrier
  2. put a quarter teaspoon of cleaning powder in your portafilter
  3. place your portafilter in the brew group
  4. open the water supply for 5 sec and close the water supply
  5. repeat 10 times
  6. remove your portafilter
  7. rinse your portafilter
  8. open the water supply of your espresso machine
  9. clean the brew group with a special cleaning brush
  10. close the water supply
  11. place your portafilter in the brew group
  12. repeat step 4, 5, 6 & 7

You can backflush your espresso machine as often as you want if you don’t use cleaning powder. You can backflushen with cleaning powder once a week with an espresso machine for your home machine. We advise the catering industry to backflush the brew group of your espresso machine every day.

Cleaning espressomachine backflushen

CLEANING ESPRESSO MACHINE

Your brew group backflushen isn’t the only thing you need to do to maintain the quality of your espresso, there are also other things you need to do to keep your espresso machine clean. Every time after frothing, clean your steam wand with a wet cloth and purge the steam wand. If you haven’t done it, it’s about time you clean your steam wand with Cafetto Milk Frother Cleaner! Dissolve 30 ml in a milk jug with 500 ml of hot water and place the steam wand in the jug, let it soak for 15 minutes. After fifteen minutes remove the jug and purge the steam wand, also clean the outside of the steam wand well with a damp cloth!

One last step to keep the quality of your espresso constant; replace your water filter on time. Your water filter filters your water and ensures a special mineral balance in the water. The filter can only filter x liter of water, after which the filter is saturated and you will no longer get soft water. This does something to the taste of your coffee, because coffee consists 98% water, but it also means that your espresso machine will have to endure with limescale. Limescale sticks to the inside of your pipes and boiler. So replace your filter on time. At home, we recommend using a Brita filter jug to filter your tap water. You can put the filtered water in your espresso machine.

At the end of the day, also clean your drip tray. Remove the drip tray and rinse it under the tap. Then dry the drip tray well with a tea towel and your machine is ready for the next day. Of course you also want your machine to look neat, so wipe the espresso machine with a microfibre cloth with cleaning agent every day.