Keeping your Breville coffee machine clean isn’t just good housekeeping; it’s also an important step to making coffees with amazing body and flavour. Not sure where to begin? Here are some simple cleaning tasks to incorporate into your regular coffee making routine.
Clean your group head regularly
Located at the front of every espresso machine including all Breville machines, the group head is where water is pumped before it hits the basket of your portafilter. It’s important to keep this area clean, as coffee residue can give your coffee a stale taste.
Cleaning can be easily done through a process called ‘back flushing’. Make sure there is enough water in the Breville machine tank and the drip tray is empty, place a blind filter (one with no holes) in the portafilter head.
After each time you brew, you can run a simple water back flush by running the brewing cycle with the blind filter or portafilter plug in place, and this will remove any left over coffee granuels and residue. Once the shot is finished, take out the portafilter and empty and remaining water into the drip tray. The water that has been back flushed will automatically spill over into the drip tray.
For a deeper clean, insert your espresso machine cleaning powder according to the instructions, fix the portafilter inside the group head.
Following this, press the ‘menu’ button under the screen and start a clean cycle. For full instructions, see our video on how to clean a group head on a Breville espresso machine.
Look after your steam wand
Thoroughly cleaning the milk from your steam wand after you make a coffee is important, both for flavour and hygiene. Each time you texture your milk, wipe the residue away with a clean, damp cloth, then purge the wand by fully turning the steam on for a few seconds.
To remove caked milk from the tip of your wand, use the wand cleaning tool that has pins to remove any caked milk from the small holes of the steam wand. This tool also acts as a wrench to remove the steam wand tip, which can be soaked in a jug of hot water and dish wash soap to remove any milk residue. We show you how in this short instructional video.
Clean your Breville shower screen
It may be a small item, but your Breville machine’s shower screen plays an important role in helping the water spread evenly over the grinds in your portafilter basket.
Coffee oils and fine coffee grounds build up inside your shower screen over time, so it’s a good idea to clean it regularly. Remove the screw at the centre of the shower screen with the Allen key provided with your machine, then soak both the screen and the screw in a solution of warm water and espresso machine cleaning powder. Then gently scrub the shower screen with a toothbrush and rinse. Here’s a video that shows all the steps.
Consider using filtered water in your Breville machine
Even the easiest to clean espresso machine is at risk of lime scale build up. Tap water contains a lot of dissolved substances that can corrode the metallic parts of your Breville espresso machine over time, resulting in costly repairs.
Your Breville machine has a built in water filter that needs replacing every 2 to 3 months depending on the usage. However using filtered water can help reduce this risk of lime scale build up further and improve the longevity of your machine. A simple filter like the BWT jug inhibits lime scale build up in your machine by reducing the amount of chlorine and heavy metals in the water. The filter jug also adds magnesium into the water, which bonds to the flavour compounds in coffee and makes the extraction process much more efficient. Find out more in our video.
Cleaning your coffee grinder
Your grinder is just as crucial to the coffee making process as your machine, so don’t forget to include it in your cleaning routine, particularly if you are using different types of coffee as left over residue from one coffee could impact the taste of your brew.
On a weekly basis you can remove leftover grounds by unlocking the hopper of your grinder which is the same system for the Breville Smart grinder and built in grinders. This will give you access to wipe out your hopper and grind chamber to remove excess grounds, chaff and any oil that has built up inside. It's recommended to brush away any excess coffee from the grinding burrs, or conical burrs, with the small hand brush provided in your Breville cleaning kit. You may need to use a vacuum to remove excess coffee around the mouth of the grinder.
For a deeper clean of your conical burrs, follow the instruction manual provided by Breville to take out the burrs to clean before reassembling. This level of clean does not need to completed often, but could be worthwhile if you have been using different coffee types during brewing.
We recommend storing excess whole beans in a cool, dark place to keep them fresh. Do not store coffee in the fridge as the moisture levels will ruin the coffee and your grinder could become damaged from grinding wet coffee beans.
If you have a hand grinder, you can clean it by pulling it apart, removing the conical burr set and gently brushing it with a dry toothbrush. For more details on how to keep your hand grinder clean, see our video.
You can check out or full range of Breville brewing tips and trick in our YouTube playlist here.
Explore the range of Breville coffee machines here. Pablo & Rusty's is an affiliate partner of Breville.
