Time for your Quarterly Espresso Machine Group Maintenance
Recently, we looked through our vault of coffee knowledge and were inspired to re-visit a topic that we will be highlighting every quarter from here on out. We advocate for these simple tasks because of their direct relationship to coffee quality.

We also advocate a pro-active fixed cost maintenance schedule, as opposed to a re-active emergency increased cost maintenance schedule.

EP took a survey that asked a simple question to address the topic at hand.

Do you change your group gasket and portafilter basket at the same time? How Often?

The numbers that came in, were a little concerning. To help drive home the importance of maintenance schedules, the results are shared below:

Quarterly Group Maintenance
It should be common knowledge that minor espresso machine group maintenance should be done quarterly or at the very least twice a year. We try our best to preach it here at Espresso Parts. What this means is that group gaskets, group screens, and portafilter baskets should all be changed simultaneously in conjunction with a very thorough group head cleaning.
Why so often?

Let’s start with taste: Build up of coffee oils around the gasket can adversely affect your espresso’s flavor. Preventive maintenance: Over time your gaskets can become “baked” in place making them difficult to replace at best. Changing the gasket, screen, and basket together: Over time the mating surface and bottom of the portafilter basket will inevitably wear. By the time symptoms like leaking portafilters become noticeable you have may have a bigger problem on your hands. Basket replacement suddenly becomes critical and expedited shipping charges may have to be paid to get the new portafilter baskets quickly. Your new $7-12 portafilter basket just cost you $40 or so. Don’t let it happen to you.

We have Basic Espresso Machine Group Maintenance tutorials and a host of others in our Espresso/Coffee Tutorial section.

Below you’ll find group gaskets, portafilter baskets, group screens, and even some kits that contain all you need to perform your next group maintenance.


Espresso Machine Cleaning Products – View Full List

EP_CLEANKIT_DLX

Espresso Machine Group Rebuild Kits – View Full List

Go to EspressoParts.com for a full list of products
CleaningCleaning & maintenanceEspresso machineEspresso machine maintenance