The Beginner’s Guide to Coffee Machine Maintenance

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I hope this video encourages you to invest a little time and effort in your cleaning and maintenance!

Video Mentioned:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:37 Espresso - Portafilter
03:50 Espresso - Grouphead pt 1
08:14 Trainwell Ad
09:59 Espresso - Grouphead pt 2
11:14 Espresso - Steamwand
12:38 Espresso - Descaling
17:32 Espresso - Other maintenance
18:35 Grinders
24:06 Filter Coffee Brewers
25:44 Other coffee equipment
27:26 Outro

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[matzk]

30 Minutes of Hoffmann calling me dirty is exactly what I needed today.

[stevenmacdonald]

As a Northerner that spent a few years living in London, my heart goes out to all there. The water is just calcium carbonate, with a little added water.

[zuai]

12:37 "you know who you are" saw deep into my soul and I am ashamed 😔

[anna-mariacovich]

I was staying with my dad after he had surgery and I noticed that the portafilter of his premillenium la pavona was looking pretty dirty so I tried to clean it... Cut to 3 hours later, we have the machine in pieces and have chipped and polished away probably 30 years worth of coffee particles using his dremel tool. Everything that moved got a bit of vegetable oil lubrication and we put it back together. I heard him get up around 5am to make coffee, because he was so excited to see what difference it made.
He has been struggling for years to pull a really good shot, adding thermostats and pressure gauges, playing with the grind... he takes a sip an exclaims "this is best shot I've ever had from that machine!!!"
I wish I'd tried it before and after now.

[li-hsienyen]

Learned a new Acronym today -
RTFM = Read the Manual

[kamilduszak]

I work at DeLonghi repair service and You can't even imagine how badly some people maintain their coffee appliances. Both espresso and automatic coffee machines. We get A LOT of reports of "the machine doesn't froth the milk" and easily 90% of the time it is due to the clogging of the milk carafes and steamwands with old crusted milk. Also there is a lot of reports about the machine "loosing its pressure over time" and of course during the diagnose we see that the portafilter is literally clogged with old coffee.
KEEP YOUR APPLIANCES CLEAN and RTFM and You will be happy with Your coffee machine for long years :)
If You have any questions, feel welcome to ask, I'll try to answer :)

[tctruffin]

"See how that goes [smirk]" The voice of experience.

[fsxmaniac]

You presume that maintenance is a boring topic to me? I’m coming fresh from an hour long video about the functioning of a dishwasher. Do carry on

[NonaPaskemin]

I love how James Hoffman is able to be so polite while he's also being super sassy

[marcberm]

Finding the manual PDF is a step that is not to be overlooked. As a force of habbit, I now search/find the PDF version of the manual for every non-trivial thing I buy (small appliances, tools, electronics, etc.) Renaming the files as something you'll recognize, and keeping all of them in a folder on your hard drive and/or a thumb drive saves unimaginable aggrivation and frustration later.

[dawsonjohannes]

I ran a student run cafe in university as an engineering student. This video makes my heart so happy, as during my time I implemented a comprehensive PM program and documented all maintenance procedures for all of our equipment. Lots of late nights spent disassembling and cleaning the equipment that had not been maintained for years. Group head gaskets were hard as rocks.

[treyrmason]

As a coffee technician, I really appreciate you putting this out so that people can show love to their equipment (even though it might diminish my business a little bit 😉)

I will say, the amount of espresso cleaner demonstrated in the blank portafilter disc is pretty excessive. For most folks, it probably wouldn’t be an issue to use too much. However, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been called by a cafe because there’s no flow through their groups, and the issue was that they’re using too much cleaner and rinsing wasn’t sufficient to clear it out of the solenoid valve. That causes it to solidify and the plunger in the valve gets stuck closed.

If you’re lucky, you can do an extended soak with cleaner to release the residual gunked cleaner. If you’re unlucky, I have to come open your machine to clean out the cleaner from your group valve (ironic and expensive).

Happy brewing (and cleaning), everyone 🤠

[thtwirdgrl]

I don't own an espresso machine, I live purely on pour overs, but I was told not to skip this video and I'll use any James video as background noise because his voice is just that nice.

[doudou]

The topic did seem boring, but because James Hoffman said it was important I watched the whole thing. Turned out it was not boring at all because, well, James Hoffman of course!

[homonym]

‘Making sure the exit chute is clean is the number 1 task’
I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s more of a number 2 sort of thing

[worawatli]

I love how my Breville has "Clean me" reminder light that come up when it has reached its maintenance cycle, it kept me doing routine cleaning of it without fail. And it has auto-cleaning, just put in the cleaning basket with detergent and let it clean itself, all of these kept lazy person like me on time with maintenance.
It's been over 3 years and problem free.

[LeavinMyTown]

THANK YOU JAMES FOR DOING THIS! Working in hospitality I am so sick of being told different things by different people about how to clean an espresso machine. I just want something to set the record straight!

[Drunkenvalley]

I don't own a coffee machine, but I guess I'll watch just about anything James presents just cuz it's hella neat.

[Chefkraken]

We recently deep cleaned our coffee brewer for the first time in ages, and it then created the single best cup of coffee I've had in years. It's well worth the effort to maintain a clean machine!

[fynn]

I like how when the Niche is grinding, James is resting his hand on it. It looks like a motivating hand on the back to reassure the grinder that it can do it.