Re: What To Do With This Espresso Machine
 

Thanks for the welcome :)

Concentrated citric acid could be used to bathe the boiler (remove all fittings and leave it to soak for a day), but I'd not use CLR as its not really a food grade product, where as citric acid is made of lemons.

After soaking, flush thoroughly with clean water (boiled or deionised).

To properly descale though, it needs disassembly.

That being said, it might not be THAT bad, but I always assume the worst because the service history is unknown and we dont know if its had regular flush descaling throughout its life or not.

Ps citric acid turns your copper components a bright pinkish colour, as it strips all the tarnishing off.. so don't be alarmed once you see it changing colour :)

Thank you!

I'm going to fix it up. Took a peek inside, it doesn't look too bad, seems internally complete.

I won't use it for morning coffee. I imagine it as more of a dinner party thing, turn it on when folks arrive to be ready when it's time for espresso.

I'm actually thinking it could live in my dining room, in an alcove dedicated to drinks and after-dinner coffee. I can bring a water line and 240v there. If it polishes up nicely, that is.

A friend has an ex-cafe machine. His is a 3 porterfilter machine and he uses it as a home machine. Relax and enjoy it alot.

Especially, don't pull it to bits and fix it if it doesn't need fixing.

You're welcome :)

You definitely can't use it as a morning machine, unless you have a timer which turns the machine on at least an hour before you need to use it.. they take ages to warm up! As a dinner party machine and a conversation piece, its perfect, if you've got the room to keep it!

You'll need to plumb it in too, the rotary pumps inside won't run correctly without water line pressure on the inlet side (as opposed to the vibration pumps that consumer level machines have in them, they'll work fine without inlet pressure beyond atmospheric).. the machine water connection is 3/8", which is standard across all commercial machines.

As well as plumbing in the water inlet, you'll have to plumb the drain in too, again, they're not designed to catch water in the drip tray like a consumer type machine.. a rubber or clear plastic hose connected with a hose clamp to the underside of the drip tray (they have a little catchment box with a connection on the end to connect the hose to), and running either to your kitchen drain (same as a dishwasher), or to a bucket hidden under your bench which you'll need to empty every time you use the machine.

It's a good idea to run an inline water particulate filter at the very least, dual stage (water filter + water softener) is preferred as you won't have to descale the machine as often.. and descaling a commercial machine involves all sorts of trickery including manual fill of the boiler with the descaling solution i.e. its a pain in the ass to do it often.

Being a heat exchanger (HX) machine (basically a copper water pipe that runs through the boiler, with water inside the pipe that heats up due to the boiling water surrounding the pipe in the boiler), the less the machine gets used, the hotter the water gets. You need to do a 10 second or so cooling flush prior to pulling a shot, otherwise you'll scorch the grinds with water thats way too hot. Even when pulling shots on a HX machine, I'll do a 2-3 second flush before each shot just to stabilise the temperatures and get the consistency right.

Also.. what coffee will you be using?? Using pre-ground on a machine such as that is going to bring out all the shortfalls in the coffee. Pre-ground is generally stale and won't taste good! You'll want to get a grinder (doserless, as a doser grinder with the clicker handle on the front, stores ground coffee in the front and is made for high volume use only), and use freshly roasted whole beans to get the best results... basically, getting into this sort of coffee can be a slippery slope, just like owning a Porsche :D You'll then need tamps, knock box, jugs, thermometers, and the list goes on. It's so worth it though :D

No. Only really an issue if there is a motor involved.

Ian

Great info here!!