How to maintain your coffee machine

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How to maintain your coffee machine

Coffee machine maintenance splits into two directions. First, it is daily cleaning routines, which care first about aesthetics and coffee flavour. Second, it is deeper maintenance, which covers a wider range of aspects. That is to say, its mission includes:
  • Keeping your coffee machine at top performance
  • Preventing appliance failures and breakdowns
  • Caring about your (and, in case of coffee shops and cafés, your customers’) safety

Everyday cleaning routine

Everyday cleaning is what you can do yourself. Here are the components you need to wash and wipe every time after you use the appliance:
  • Drip tray
  • Portafilter
  • Streamer arm
As our experience in coffee machine repairs shows, the streamer arm is one of the most often neglected components. While 99% of coffee machine owners clean their drip trays and portafilters regularly, only 60% of them do this for the streamer arm.
However, cleaning the streamer arm is also important. To clarify, when you emerge the arm into milk for steaming, milk particles have all the chances to stick around the nozzle end. Moreover, some of these particles may even get inside the nozzle. The last ones are especially harmful as they can block the nozzle over time. In turn, clogging the nozzle will lead to appliance breakage and even may endanger your safety.

Other helpful maintenance routines

While cleaning tasks are always self-servicing tasks (unless they are neglected so badly that you need to arrange professional cleaning), deeper maintenance is two ways to go:
  • DIY servicing, which, typically, includes water tank (boiler) descaling
  • Turning to service companies to arrange professional maintenance
First, you can descale your water tank yourself. Do it at least once three months or more often if you have hard water. For this, add some de-scaler in water, fill your water tank with this mixture, and enable the descale mode. For domestic units without the descale mode, the procedure is the same by enabling the espresso mode. Do not forget to put a jug or another container for collecting water.
Second, for domestic coffee machines, you may need professional descaling, which is often more efficient than a DIY one. We recommend arranging this at least once every two years. For commercial appliances, professional maintenance involves servicing the casing unit and checking the pump operating pressure. Here, you need to schedule maintenance visits once every six months.

Call us if you have more questions about servicing your coffee machine or want to arrange professional maintenance for the appliance.