Cleaning routine help

[geral]

Just hoping a knowledgable person can tell me what a good cleaning routine for my Bezzera bz02s should be? I've just upgraded from my gaggia classic to this and after 3days of use I can say without doubt I'm in love! So glad I was able to afford the upgrade, just amazed by the steam ability & ease of use of this machine. Am interested to know daily cleaning routine aswell as weekly/monthly etc? I rang Bezzera re an operation manual as this machine was 2nd hand & was told descaling was not recommended rather cleaning with silted water?
Also what water should I be using in this? At present just been using rainwater, is this wrong? Thanks in advance.

[Morgz]

Your request for a "knowledgable" person probably rules me out, but here goes :-) My routine is this: after each use I back flush with the blind basket to remove coffee oils and stray grinds. I also scrub the shower screen and gasket with my pallo coffee tool, wipe down all the surfaces and make sure the steam wand is clean and clear. On a monthly basis (roughly) I do all of the above but back flush with a cleaning solution, in my case Cafetto. I usually soak my portafilters and baskets in a Cafetto solution too. I use a piece of nylon pot scrubber to clean inside the portafilter holder and scrub the baskets clean. After all is done I flush liberally with fresh, filtered water, clean all the stainless and that's that.

As for water, I use the Brita C150 filter kit from Bombora to make drinking water and to fill my machine (in Perth). Here in KL I use a Brita jug to filter the water in my apartment, which itself is filtered by the building's systems. Rain water should be ok depending on how and where you collect it, but it's probably worth testing it for hardness just to make sure.

[Dimal]

G'day Geral...

Rather than go into a wordy explanation of the general routine to follow, here's a link to a page of Videos for various machines, and another with very good explanations, some of which will be adaptable to your Bezz...

And of course, the excellent series of videos available on the ECA Website...

Mal.