How to Clean a Coffee Machine at Home with Chemical Cleaner
Here we are teaching you the process of cleaning a Quick Mill Rubino coffee machine which has an E61 style group head. The process of cleaning this really is the same as cleaning any other coffee machine with an E61 style group head such as a La Marzocco Linea Mini or a Giotto Rocket for example.
To keep your machine in great condition and your coffee tasting amazing, as a general rule we recommend cleaning your domestic coffee machine after every kilogram of coffee that you put through it. Our preferred cleaning powder for cleaning coffee machines is Cafetto Espresso Clean which you can find on our website. This is a simple way to get in the habit of doing it on a regular basis and making sure the machine is getting the TLC it deserves.
If you have any questions about cleaning your coffee machine or need some advice be sure to get in touch. Hope you enjoy the video.
Video Transcript
0:00
Today I'm going to show you how to clean the group head of your home
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espresso machine.
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And I'm going to dispel a few of the myths out there
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that people talk about and whether they are true or not.
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So let's get straight into it.
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The first thing that you're going to need is a really good chemical cleaner.
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And for us here, we refer to the Cafetto products.
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It's definitely our brand of choice.
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They have been around for a long time.
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They're all NSF, NSF certified and all that.
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Great instructions and a great product here in Australia
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for you to clean your machine.
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They do have some tips on here on how to use it.
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But there's a couple little things I'm going to let you know that we do different
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to make sure that machine is perfectly clean and also
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how to actually get this chemical out so that you can make a coffee safely
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because you might want to clean it and then drink a coffee straight away.
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And if you want to go for a deep
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clean, the other thing you're going to need is a little flat head screwdriver.
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You're going to need a group head brush
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and you're going to need a blind filter basket as well.
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So a quick note about the cleaner.
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This is a powdered product and this is a kilo.
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That's a 500 gram.
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Obviously, a lot more value in this size.
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And it comes with a little dosing spoon.
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Well, it comes with the dosing spoon because that's how much chemical you need.
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So the first myth I'm going to bust is it's not a tiny little bit
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on the end of a teaspoon.
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You need a full flat level scoop every time you use this product.
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And that's going to help you make sure you can attack the oils
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and the build up inside your coffee machine head.
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You can get similar products that are in a tablet form
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and that's okay as well because that's one measured amount of
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chemical that's going to help attack the head.
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The thing that we don't like about the tablet
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is sometimes they don't always dissolve
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and it doesn't get into the head when you're trying to flush it.
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So for us, powder's the choice that we want to use.
2:02
So your machine needs to be hot and on before we start to clean.
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Take out your group handle.
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And it is a bit tricky to get at your basket sometimes.
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So get your blind basket and use the little lip on the back
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and you can simply pop it out.
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We'll pop in our blind basket
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and we need to get some Cafetto cleaner.
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Now, before I put the Cafetto cleaner
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in, I'd actually run some water and do a bit of a flush first
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and you'll see that you can get a fair bit just coming out.
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You go
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just by wiggling it that little bit we've managed to get the water
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to come over the seal and catch some of those grinds.
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So they're not going to come out by chemical.
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That's a physical clean that has to be done.
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So I'm going to do it again.
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Just to get that grind out.
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There you go, so a couple, a little bit less there.
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One more go.
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Awesome.
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So that's clean.
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Now we need to start thinking about the chemical
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to get further into this actual brewing head.
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Now, this is a manual leavered E61 head,
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so we controlled the flow of the water through the head.
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You might have an automated button that you're going to press,
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which is simply opening a solenoid
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and you want to make sure that chemical gets through there.
3:28
So we want to make sure, again, we've got the right amount.
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So as I said earlier, one full level teaspoon to make sure that we're going to get
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a really good clean on these machines.
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So turn it on.
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Get some water in there.
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Give a bit of a swirl, and you should start to see
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that bubbling up and reacting and foaming up.
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Then lock it in
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does make a little bit of a mess.
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And if you have looked in here quickly, you'll see that the foam
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is already reacting to the water in there and it's already
4:00
eating out those coffee oils that have built up inside the head.
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I don't have the pump open and providing any pressure.
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So literally,
4:07
this chemical is reacting with water and starting to eat everything away.
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So that is the other myth that I want to bust straight away.
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Everyone thinks you've got to straightaway
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turn that button on and flush the chemicals through.
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It's not about flushing it through.
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It's about allowing time for that chemical to work with the water to eat away
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all the mess.
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So you can see now that it has pretty much stopped.
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This is the bottom of the expansion chamber in the machine.
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So there's no more water left to react basically with that chemical.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a little bit of extra water in.
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And then as
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I push it down, you'll see it will exhaust out again.
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And it came out quite dark,
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but now there's been more water introduced to that chemical.
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It's starting to react again and foam up.
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And you can see now that it is looking quite clean.
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Now, if it was still dirty, you may need to add more chemical in.
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So we find people
5:05
pump lots of chemicals through, but there's never the right amount of time
5:08
to actually allow it to eat all those coffee oils
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that have built up in your head or in the solenoids of your machine.
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So once you're happy that that is coming out clean,
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if you've got a solenoid machine it would be in the bottom of the drip
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tray, you'd be able to see that that that that liquid or the foam coming out.
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Basically, once it's white your machines clean.
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So now we have to get the chemical out of the machine.
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So the chemicals in the machine.
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And the other myth that I want to clear up now
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is that you wouldn't leave this chemical all night.
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Once you put it in and you've cleaned it, you've got to get it out straight away.
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So if you hop into a cafe and they say, oh, there's chemical
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in the machine and I'm leaving it overnight, it's a bit of a myth.
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They're just wanting to close up and get home as soon as they can
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and look fair enough to them.
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It's a good reason, but hey it's not as honest as it should be.
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So you can clean this right now, get the chemical out
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and make coffee straight away.
6:02
So the first thing we want to do is we want to take out a group handle
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and we're going to use, give it a bit of a flush.
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And you can see that that black
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coffee and
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brown oils has made its way through the head.
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Now, I've used all of that foam
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and it's actually been taken all into the head.
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If we pulled it out and there's a bit of foam there, I would reuse that to start
6:26
scrubbing the front of the the group head up in around the seal.
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But because
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I've pumped it all through the machine, I just need to get a little bit more foam.
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So in this case, I'm just going to put a little bit in there,
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get a bit of water
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and I'm going to grab my group brush.
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Now, this is a brand new group brush,
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but they really should look like this.
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It should be like the shabby toothbrush that you've been using a lot.
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So if you got one of these sitting in your drawer,
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you definitely haven't been cleaning your machine properly.
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So get it out and start giving it a really good scrub just like you do
7:05
when you're cleaning your teeth.
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Get in there clean that group seal.
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And we're trying to clean where this part locks into the machine.
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So the fact that it's actually bent, it's actually quite handy because those
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those little brushes do go in sideways.
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So give it a good scrub.
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Here we go.
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Now I'm going to tip out that waste, give it a flush,
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and I'm going to do the process that we did at the very start
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by actually popping in the handle, turning it on.
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Now that chemical is going up over the seal
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and helping getting rid of all those coffee oils
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that are around.
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Now, the longer you let that overflow, the more water you might get on your hand.
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It can be a bit hot so just be careful.
7:52
Here we go.
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So we've cleaned the inside of the machine,
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we've cleaned around the seal, and where the group handle locks in.
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Now it's a matter
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of getting rid of the chemical totally out from the inside of that machine.
8:05
So my drip tray is filling up here a little bit and you can see I'm
8:09
making a little bit of mess, but we've got to clean it.
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That's pretty much what it's about.
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So flush, get some water to come through.
8:16
Make sure a handle is rinsed
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then all I'm going to do is pop that back in.
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I'm going to do a series of
8:24
extractions, basically getting the pump pressure to come all the way up.
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If you've got a gauge on your machine, this one doesn't have it,
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but it'll go up to nine bars.
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You can hear that now.
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Then you would release the pressure
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and you can see that that chemical is pumping out.
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So I'm going to continue to do that quite a few times.
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The pressure's built up,
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and I'm just going to slowly
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release that so that doesn't splurt everywhere.
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So we're just pumping water into the head and back through
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and getting rid of all of that chemical.
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Okay.
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So I like to do it three to five times.
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Then I
9:03
bring it back out and give it another quick little flush
9:07
because some of that chemical is hanging around that
9:09
top head
9:14
and I'm going to do
9:15
another five flushes just to get that water
9:19
pumping all the way through.
9:31
All right.
9:32
Your the machine's clean.
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So you can really make a coffee right now.
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If you want to test something just give your basket
9:41
a bit of a rinse there and then have a smell of the water.
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If you can smell any chemical,
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which that's just smells like hot water to me,
9:49
you'd go back and keep rinsing again.
9:53
Now I'm going to have to empty this drip tray because it is quite full.
9:55
And then I'm going to show you my next tip.
9:57
To make sure that we re-season this head so there's
9:59
definitely no chemical in there.
10:01
So what I recommend is seasoning the machine.
10:04
And this is something that's great
10:05
to get rid of all that chemical out before you drink your next espresso.
10:09
I've just popped our blind basket out
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and I've popped in a coffee basket.
10:15
I've gone a little bit fine on the grind and it's a low dose.
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And I'm going to tamp it really hard because what I want to do is make sure
10:24
that the water
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isn't going to make its way all the way through the coffee bed.
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I want it to make a coffee slurry, let's say,
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and push that back through the machine because the coffee chemical
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is designed to eat away at coffee and the oils.
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So if I now put oils back in there, it will hopefully take
10:42
any of that residual chemical out and won't end up in your next cup.
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So we're basically going to do the same process as normal for a back back flush,
10:52
but we're not going to put as much water in.
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We want to make that slurry first.
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So a little bit of water in there
10:59
just to try and get that to
11:01
to brew and you'll start to see coming out the bottom.
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It's water at the moment,
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but it will end up looking like coffee, water
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There you go.
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You can start to see the color changing there
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All right.
11:24
So just a couple of those basically pumped coffee oils through it.
11:28
We're just going to remove our handle
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give it a flush.
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You can pop your blind basket back in one more
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time.
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One last little flush there.
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Lock it in.
11:53
Pump some more fresh water just to get rid of that coffee oils.
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And there you go.
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I can make espresso now and there is no way that I would taste
12:03
any of that Cafetto
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or your coffee cleaning chemical that you've used in your machine.
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So there you go.
12:08
I hope that's helped
12:09
you understand how to clean your machine to make it happen really quickly.
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Get the chemical in, get it out, and then enjoy another espresso.
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Now, we recommend that you should do this before you pop in your next bag of beans
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so that you get to enjoy a nice clean machine every time
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you're popping a full bag of beans in your grinder.
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Don't put it on a time-frame of a month or a week or whatever.
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The more you clean it, the less build up there's going to be.
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And the tasty you're going to get.
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The tastier your coffee is going to be because there's less residual coffee oils
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from all that old espresso you've been making.
12:44
One thing we realized when we were editing this video is that we did not talk
12:47
about the screwdriver.
12:49
Well, what is for is so that you can deep clean your shower screen by removing it.
12:54
So if you get yourself a little flat head screwdriver and you bring it down
12:58
under this edge and you pop it onto the edge of the metal
13:01
and lever on one side, then you can lever on the other
13:08
you can
13:08
pop out your shower screen and your seal.
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So they literally just separate.
13:13
You can give them a good clean, you can clean up under here as well.
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Then you can put it back in and your machine will be super clean.
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So guys, if you need some Cafetto it's online.
13:24
If you need a brush, backwash basket,
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any of those little tools they are definitely on our store.
13:27
Jump on there and grab those.
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And if you got any questions, leave a comment down below.
13:32
Happily answering that one for you.
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Thanks very much for watching. We'll catch you next time. Cheers!
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