Short answer: no, I don't find the OP's cleaning regimen to be extreme.

Long answer: over the years I have read many comments that effectively claim, "don't clean your coffee making equipment", "rinse it but never use soap", etc. etc. I have always found these statements to be extremely odd (e.g., see this post from over five years ago). Brewing coffee is cooking. With the obvious exception of cast iron/aluminum pots and pans*, what other kitchen implements would you recommend not cleaning thoroughly?

Some people claim that they can taste soap residue after washing and rinsing. If this is true, you have my sympathy. I always wash my glassware and dishes with soap, and rinse it throughly. Coffee equipment is no exception. (If soap residue is really an issue, try diluting your dish detergent 3-4X with water, rather than applying it full strength to the cookware. This makes it easier to rinse off.)

Other people state that cleaning espresso gear is a waste of time. I disagree. I accept input from all my senses, not just taste. If something smells, or if there is visible evidence of dirt, it needs to be cleaned. When you find dried-on food on your utensils in a restaurant, don't you ask for a clean fork? I do.

For espresso gear, this is not a subtle effect. Here is a picture of residual grinds from the grouphead of my Spaz after a slightly-updosed pour (16g). On the left is a quick shower screen brush and rinse. On the right is the subsequent PF wiggle. I don't think anything more needs to be said about the left side. Is that what you want to use for brewing the next shot? Yuck. Even the right side clearly shows spent grinds and discolored liquid, and I don't want that baking onto the grouphead and shower screen.


My cleaning regimen is similar to the OP's. After every shot I give a quick (1oz) grouphead rinse. After every series of shots I brush and rinse the shower screen, followed by PF wiggle and water backflush. The Spaz has a double shower screen to trap grinds, which I remove and scrub every few days. Once a week I do a detergent backflush. Anything less, and I believe the espresso quality degrades.

* which require seasoning to maintain nonstick properties

Extreme? No. Thorough. It's more PITA than I'm willing to put up with, maybe more than necessary, but that doesn't make it wrong. If you're happy that it makes a difference, a happy peppersass is a good thing.

Detergent? Commercial coffee shops do it daily, why shouldn't you? The idea is to prevent oils from baking on, and the TSP types of detergents certainly help. I clean my pfs and baskets with a Scotch Brite cloth daily, and use detergent once or twice a week. It seems adequate to me, but there's nothing wrong with daily except that it will eventually eat through your pf handles.

Dishwasher? No. Wrong soaps, not enough rinse, too much perfume, and the temps and drying cycle are tough on your handles.

Just generally, it's a good idea to keep any metal utensil with a wood or plastic handle out of the DW. Tell your wife you learned it from Martha Stewart or some other domestic goddess and keep my name out of it.

BDL

I think that the concern about doing frequent chemical backflushing is that it can remove the oils that help lubricate certain types of groups, i.e. e61 groups with cams and levers, and that it can accelerate wear and tear of rubber seals within the group.

From Chris' Coffee's FAQ page;

How often should I backflush?
You can backflush as often as you like with plain water, every time you make coffee if you like, it won't hurt a thing. Backflushing with detergent is a different story. The frequency that you should backflush depends on how much coffee you make each day. For example, if you work in a coffeehouse making hundreds of espresso drinks per day, you should be backflushing nightly. However, if you are a home user making between two and six shots per day, I only recommend you backflush with detergent not more than once every two to four weeks.

The fact that you can feel and hear friction and squeaking after doing a chemical backflush on an e61 machine is an indication that the coffee oils have been washed out and the group is being subjected to somewhat greater stress. The squeaking goes away after a shot or two, because the coffee oils have relubricated the inner surfaces. Whether this same concern applies to other types of machines like the OP's GS3 is not clear to me.

It's also not clear how much chemical backflushing is too much. Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? I've decided that once every two or three weeks is a good balance between keeping the machine clean and causing excessive wear and tear on the group, but I don't have any scientific data to show whether this is correct or not.

Beezer wrote:Whether this same concern applies to other types of machines like the OP's GS3 is not clear to me.

The group of the volumetric GS/3 has no moving parts other than the 3-way valve, which doesn't need lubrication. The group of the MP (manual paddle) GS/3 has movable parts that allow the user to separately open the valve and turn on the motor, but they're not touched by water and hence are not subject to contamination by coffee oils.

(How the heck did I become the OP here? Splitting off the thread makes it look like I started a thread to talk about my cleaning regimen rather than responding to someone else's comments. I'm not that proud of it!)

Robot wrote:- Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. 13

13 Ch'uan Teng Lu, 22. (The Way of Zen 126)

Coffee is much the same. In the beginning, coffee is just coffee. Once we learn more about it, we find that there is so much protocol and science behind it. Once we've come to understand these, coffee becomes coffee again and can be enjoyed for what it is. I agree with both, you must understand the relationship between variables and how they interact with the cup, but you must not forget the whole point, that the coffee is to be enjoyed.

Such wisdom and from a robot of all things. I wonder sometimes if when my computer idles it is meditating and contemplating great things. But if I press a key to see if it is, I take it our of idling so of course I wouldn't see if it meditates. Not dissimilar to opening the refrigerator's door to see if the light goes out when you close it, or when your little kid nudges you by the shoulder at 6 o'clock on Sunday morning and asks you "Daddy, are you asleep"?

Regarding the zen and the art of cleaning your dishes, I flash after each shot until all the grounds clear off the screen. I backflash with water every 2-3 drinks and if the screen doesn't look 'white' I put a brush to it. I always backflash water before I retire the machine for its night sleep. I'm very hesitant to backflash with detergent too often as per Chris Coffee's warning. I've decided that I will use detergent every 2 lbs. That makes it about every 50 drinks or so, which is still within Chris's guidelines, on the short cleaning cycle end. I really would like to do it at least every time I finish a bag of coffee.

I'm guessing that Chris sees machines that need repairs before warranty end, and found a correlation with "too frequent" detergent cleaning. Otherwise he'd tell you to clean as much as possible so that he will sell you more cleaners. But he doesn't.

Chris's warning about not backflushing to often mainly pertains to machines with the E61 group head, which Beezer covered in this thread @ Cleaning regime too extreme?

Since your machine has an E61 group, your proposed detergent backflushing routine sounds like a good one.