18/06/2026
Cleaning is the most underrated way to improve your everyday espresso. Coffee is notoriously oily, especially under pressure. Oil gets into everything when you run a busy café or event. A little ground coffee goes into nooks and crevices and stays there, leaking oil.
Eventually, when the machine sits idle, the oil dries out and forms layers or crusts. These need to be cleaned. Scrubbed. Dissolved. Once a day or once a week. But you have to do it.
Here you see the effect of 10 min of scrubbing on an old portafilter. The taste is so much less bitter, stringent and "green"!
