With all the talk about cleaning lately, I decided today to do some maintenance and see how bad things were. I first cleaned my Mazzer Mini grinder, then proceeded to backflush the BII and to finally change my gasket and clean my screen. Also flushed the steam boiler.
The grinder was a pleasant surprise. I run Minute Rice through about once a month, and today I took the top burr out. Everything in the machine smelled fine, and no notes of rancidity. I brushed out the leftovers, and reassembled it. I don't think I am very worried about this link in the chain, but I could see where a little vacuum could be handy every now and then. Now then, I shoot for backflushing with Cafiza about once a month, but I bet my most recent flush was two months ago. I also have never changed the screen or PF gasket, and machine is about 18 months old and stays on about 12 hours a day. I first pulled the screen and gasket, so I could see what it looked like before hand. Looking at the inside of the screen and the bottom of the exposed group, the best word that comes to mind is "ick". I replaced the screen and gasket, and did two full backflush routines with Cafiza, with soaks under pressure a few times for a few minutes each. The inside of the screen was almost clean, but still a lot of brown residue in there. I threw it in a pitcher of Cafiza and let it soak for an hour. Meantime I used Cafiza to scrub all the gunk down on the group, and flushed all that clean. Finally I replaced the gasket with a new one and also a new screen. The gasket is thinner, but too thin--even my Rancilio bottomless goes past 6 o'clock with this one. The old one has a "9" on it, and I think I must have bought 8 instead of 8.5mm thick. No worries, I don't really care where the handle ends up as long as it seals. The old seal was so brittle that when I squeezed it sideways, is broke in half in my hands. The last thing I did was to sacrifice the old screen for the sake of science. I had let it soak in Cafiza for an hour and had scrubbed it several times and rinsed well. I broke the spot welds apart so I could separate the screen and chrome ring from the underlying metal, and it was n-a-s-t-y. I'm thinking I may start replacing that every 3-6 months, but we'll see. Whoever posted that they backflush with Cafiza every day is starting to sound less insane to me. :) I have posted pictures of all this on Photobucket, here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/5xkgua If you click on any picture, there will be a description under it for what stage of the process you're seeing. Needless to say, I am looking forward to my shot tomorrow. I imagine it will be a pretty nice tasting shot...especially since I wasn't complaining about my shots yesterday! I'm converted. Ok, ok Barry, I'll descale the damn thing. bmc "Faith will move mountains, but you'd better bring a shovel....." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Brewtus" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/brewtus?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
