How to clean an Europiccola

[simonr]

I have just purchased a Europiccola after years of using stove-tops.

I have 2 questions:

1. lever pressure seems to be very light despite as fine a grind as my burr grinder can achieve and as firm a tamp as the plastic tamper that comes with the machine can manage (while I wait for a custom one) - certainly I get none of the machine moving around or the need for heroic pressure - more a light constant force. Am I doing something wrong? - there certainly seems to be a reasonable amount of crema produced but I don't have much to compare my results to.

2. how do you clean the group head internally - could you use Puly-caff or equivalent by pouring it into the boiler? The manual makes no mention of the need for anything apart from external cleaning and de-scaling (but I live in an area with no scale.) I couldn't find this information here or elsewhere on the web.

Thanks for any advice

simonr

[cannonfodder]

Take a look at these threads...

Refeathering the Peacock - Pavoni head gasket replacement

Pull Technique

Lubricating a lever machine

Warning: Filthy Images! How to Descale a Lever

Calculating the force on the level required to reach 9 bars

And dont forget the Lever forum FAQ's and Favorites

[bobcraige]

It sounds like your grinder is not sufficient for the task. As stated regularly in these forums, the grinder is critical and a good grinder is as important or more important than the espresso machine. You should be able to go through the optimum grind to the point that the machine chokes-ie. you cannot get water to go through it. You can check your tamp on a bathroom scale, you should be in the 30-40 pound range. Simply tamp with the portafilter on the scale and watch the scale. You should practice this until you get consistent results without the scale. The plastic tamper is not a problem unless it does not properly fit the basket. Once you are sure your tamp is in range, now go back to the grind and see if you can adjust until you get a reasonable resistance to the lever. As Cannonfodder suggested, there is a huge amount of information on this site directly answering your questions.