Maintaining the La Scala Butterfly.

There are a few things that are essential for making great espresso coffee and I have outlined my views on most of them already on other pages on this site. However, once you have most of the variables under control, keeping your Butterfly (or any other E61 machine) and your grinder clean is really the key to making great coffee all the time.

Every day maintenance
Every time you make a coffee, or a batch of coffees, you need to clean the surfaces with which the portafilter engages - they are the showerscreen and the surrounding seal. With plumb-in machines this is easily achieved by running some water through the group while quickly moving the portafilter backwards and forwards in its bayonet mounting. But with a benchtop machine, one needs a different approach as there is a limited amount of water in the tank and the drip tray has to be manually emptied. The easiest way I have found is, with a damp cloth, I run my little finger around the seal a few times to remove the grounds that have attached themselves there. I then wipe the showerscreen clean. I follow up by flushing a small amount of water through the group.

The other important cleaning routine is to clean the steamer wand every time you texture the milk. This is done to prevent a plug of hardened milk sealing the two holes at the tip of the wand. More importantly, if you expel a little steam after you have cleaned the tip, you will prevent any milk from remaining in the wand and possibly being drawn up by capiliary action into the tank when the machine is turned off and the tank and steamer wand cool down. Yes, there is an anti-syphon valve that should prevent this happening, but it is better to be doubly sure than rely on a component that might fail... leaving you with a putrid tank that has to be replaced. Expensive!

Less frequent maintenance

Depending on your usage cycle, you will periodically need to do some more serious cleaning of your E61 machine. If, like me, you usually only make one or two cups of coffee a day, this might only need doing every 4 - 6 weeks. You'll know, as your coffee will either begin to taste a little rancid, or you will begin to smell the rancid oils around the group. Even though you have been cleaning the group regularly, some of the oils released from the coffee during the extraction process remain under the showerscreen or around the portafilter seal.

To clean these oil deposits away, you first need to remove the dirty showerscreen (pictured above). Using a flat-head screwdriver or something similar, gently lever the showerscreen down a little on one side and then the other until the screen is released (see image sequence below).

This not only reveals the build-up of rancid oils on the inside of the showerscreen, but also shows the deposits on the bottom of the group (click on these two images for a larger views). These oil depoists are easily removed with some moist paper towel, as shown.

Below are images of the cleaned group and the inside of the cleaned showerscreen (click on images for larger view).

That's how I clean the parts I can see, but what about the bits I can't? Most of the brewing group mechanism is out of view. When you finish pulling a shot of coffee and return the lever to it's vertical position, some hot water is expelled into the drip tray as the pressure is released. This water also conatains coffee oils etc. and so the internals of group also need to be cleaned.

Your machine came with 3 filter baskets - a single shot, a double shot and a blind filter basket (without any holes) which is used when backflush cleaning the insides of the group. The backflush process uses the pressure that is normally used for forcing hot water through the coffee grounds, to instead force the water backwards though the group mechanism so that it is all expelled through the exhaust vent into the drip tray. Add some detergent or machine cleaning compound and the oils and other residues are effectively cleaned out during this process. Remember, that when you lift the lever to activate the pump, there is nowhere for the pressurised water to go (no filterbasket holes) until you return the lever to the vertical position, so about 5 seconds is all you should allow. The water vents with some force into the drip tray. I repeat this process a number of times at 20 second intervals. After a while the pressurised water comes out less forcefully and cleaning product I am using becomes spent.

There are a number of commercial machine detergents that you can buy and you can also use acetic acid (vinegar) to dissolve the oil deposits within the group. I bought a product on the Internet that everyone who used, seemed to like. It's called Puly CAFF. I use the recommened half teaspoon of this powdered detergent to backflush the group each time I remove the showerscreen and clean those visible parts as described above. As I only make about ten cups of coffee a week with my machine, that's about every three weeks and so the 900 gram container of Puly CAFF will last me about 180 years, but at around $AUD27.50, so what. It does a really good job.

Once you have cleaned the machine an pulled a shot of coffee to flush out any remaining detergent, your coffees will taste amazing.

I have also found Puly CAFF to be very useful for cleaning the stainless steel body of the Butterfly. A very small amount disolved in water and wiped over with a non-abrasive cloth has my machine looking like the day I bought it.

The other component that requires cleaning occasionally is the water tank. With the non plumb-in version, the tank is easily removed by first lifting out the hoses and the electrodes that provide 'information' for the out-of-water safety shut-down. As I filter and 'condition' my drinking water, I have only needed to clean the tank twice in three years, and only then because there was some small visible, but still tastless, deposit on the bottom of the tank.

Cleaning the LeLit PL53 Grinder

It's advisable to also clean your grinder as regularly for the same reasons you clean your coffee machine. With the LeLit PL53, all you do is remove the bean hopper and the front schute, place your vacuum cleaner nozzle over the exit port and turn both on. Then, with the grinder NOT running - unplug from power outlet to be 100% sure - vacuum the top of the burrs which are cleary visible once the hopper is removed (see before and after photos).

It takes about 30 seconds to do clean this grinder. Occasionally I run some Urnex Grindz Grinder Cleaner through my grinder. This is a granulated product that I suspect is made from rice, or something similar. It removes all traces of rancid oils and odours from the griner, even the tiny amount left after vacuuming, that is shown in the 'cleaner' schute below. Just place a capful of Grindz into the emptied hopper, set the grinder to its middle setting and grind the lot. To remove the small amount of harmless white Grindz residue, just grind a couple of potafilters of coffee, discard them, and it's all cleared and ready to go.

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