How much time does your morning espresso routine require? - Page 4

[malachi]

Wow, you do all that every morning?! :lol:

brad

Yup.

Next time you're about to pull some shots... run water through the group and portafilter (empty) into a demi. Taste it. Mmm... mmm... good. Right? That's what your coffee is made of.

Yeah, I clean my machine every day. For good reason.

[King Seven]

Chris is right, you can "revive" microfoam that's sat awhile, but there's no hope for faded crema. I demonstrated the thunk and swirl recovery technique in the video Latte Art Challenge(d). The milk start out with a bad case of "cottonball" and finished smooth. No comment on the pour itself...

This is true, but gets much more difficult the lower you drop the fat content in the milk so (all those strange) people who like semi or skimmed should steam second if they want to pour pretty pictures.

My shot making routine is pretty similar to malachi's, except the milk steaming but including the obsessive cleaning. I find the dirt taste so overpowering and distracting and ulitimately destructive to the cup that it must go.

Also once my grind is dialed in and I have had a good shot I tend to mess with the recipe for a couple more to see where else I should be looking with a particular coffee. For this reason espresso is now confined to the bar at the roastery and all I have at home is a Zassenhaus, a Chemex and a press pot.

[DigMe]

Yup.

Next time you're about to pull some shots... run water through the group and portafilter (empty) into a demi. Taste it. Mmm... mmm... good. Right? That's what your coffee is made of.

Yeah, I clean my machine every day. For good reason.

I do a quick scrub with a pallo tool and backflush with water every day and I wipe down and blow out my steaming arm but there is no way I would have time every morning to do everything you're doing. I have to be at work by about 7:40 (teacher).

EDIT: I just went and pulled some water from the machine since I've already completed my morning routine as described above. The water was fine. For someone that is only pulling 2 to 3 shots a day backflushing with water with an occasional detergent flush (I do it every week or two) is just fine.

brad

[Psyd]

I do a quick scrub with a pallo tool and backflush with water every day and I wipe down and blow out my steaming arm but there is no way I would have time every morning to do everything you're doing.
For someone that is only pulling 2 to 3 shots a day backflushing with water with an occasional detergent flush (I do it every week or two) is just fine.

My daily routine includes a PF wiggle, and a water backflush. I clean the PF and baskets when I clean the milk pitcher, and then wipe down the entire front surface of the machine with a microfibre rag while doing a quick water backflush. Once every ten shots or so, I'll take pallo brush to the group heads (more often if I think they need it) and once every fifty or seventy-five shots I'll do a detergent backflush and clean the driptray/cup heater tray. Still quite a fair bit more frequent than any commercial machine, and yet, not quite so anal/compulsive as some that have posted here.
This represents enough PM to keep the machine sparkling (I look, and the PF's and the groups look shiny brass/SS/nickel and there are not grounds in a flushing pull) and not make the monthly (or thereabouts) cleaning a huge chore.

[Fullsack]

My routine is on the long side. I am a fanatic about getting the grinder clean and usually get about a gram of left over coffee out of the grinder after each cleaning. In using only a single 14 gram dose each session, there is a fair chance of that a good portion of the next shot will contain a lot of old grinds, if the grinder still has a gram of old coffee remaining in it.

[Bex]

Depends on what you want to call the morning routine. First thing when I wake up, I go down to the kitchen and pull a shot (thank you, Intermatic timer, and thank you to the people here who suggested it!). That's roughly a five minute affair from start to the completion of cleanup.

However, the breakfast routine involves making a mocha for my wife and a latte for me to take on the drive to work. On the Carezza, if I want to build these drinks with a double shot & 8 ounces of milk for each, this means grinding, pulling a shot, steaming the milk, grinding, pulling a shot, steaming the milk, and then cleaning up. All in all it's around 15 minutes, but that's okay, because it's just part of the normal breakfast chaos.