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Easy clean solution what have you found?
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E-61 was an ECM Synchronika, replaced with an Izzo Alex Leva. Neither is perfect but both very good machines; I'm overall very satisfied with the upgrade.
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level3ninja What I mean is fiddly.
Whilst I don’t mean dishwasher safe I do mean less moving parts that get dirty and require a good clean.
Magic_Matt thanks for the info. Can I ask what was the machine you moved from and too re e61 to a sprung lever.
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Some machines definitely require more time investment than others. I moved from a thermoblock machine that only required backflushing and descaling via the water tank to an E-61 double-boiler; the time investment went up dramatically - on top of the same backflush routine, I had to regularly service and re-lube the E-61 group (a much more significant job than backflushing), as well as having the boilers descaled professionally as part of the regular service.
I've since moved to a sprung lever machine, which eliminates the backflushing (only requiring removal and cleaning of the shower screen along with the basket and pf) and frequent group cleaning, but will of course require less frequent professional servicing of the group. AFAICT that's close to the lowest cleaning effort required for a home espresso machine (though personally that wasn't a major factor in selecting a machine).
If you're concerned with cleaning time, a tidy and easily serviceable grinder would also be a factor. You're pretty much limited to hand grinders or single-dose options from a couple of manufacturers there - any traditional scaled-down commercial design where the burrs sit on top of the motor will take a significant amount of time to gain access to/clean the burrs, and will then need to be dialed in again.
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You're going to need to define easy to clean a bit more explicitly. I don't think my espresso machine is hard to clean, and it definitely doesn't take hours, unless you count per year. You just need to work the cleaning into your coffee routine and it has a pretty minimal impact. My cleaning involves backflushing with a blind filter after each coffee making session, approx. 1min. Weekly chemical backflushing, then pull shot and discard, then backflush with blind filter, approx. 5-10min once a week. Soak shower screen, portafilter and basket in chemical cleaner and boiling water followed by copious water flushing, approx. 5-10min once a month or so. I used to descale every 2 months, which took about an hour, but I've since installed an underbench filter that means the machine won't need descaling.
So without descaling we're taking less than 1.5 hours per month total cleaning time. If you can't manage that there's not much to be done.
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Easy clean solution what have you found?
Hi there,
Long time lurker! I’m looking at jumping into the world of espressos after being a longtime aeropress black coffee drinker.
I’ve always loathed the idea of something that’s hard to clean. Is this a trap for all espresso machines?
Has any coffee snob been down this rabbit hole and found an easy to clean option for making beautiful espresso with nice steady temperature?
I couldn’t handle spending thousands on something I then need to spend hours of time on cleaning.
simple to clean and I could compromise a little on other areas.

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