Commercial Coffee Machinery Maintenance

I'm a big advocate for cafes, coffee vans, and restaurants to have a preventative maintenance schedule in place to help avoid unwanted machinery breakdowns causing business interruption and stress from that situation. No one wants to close the doors to fix a coffee machine, every kilo of coffee not sold equals over $300 in the cash register.

If your business is not located within the city, it can be not easy to organise a machine tech c to site within a day. Therefore, I recommend an eight-monthly machine maintenance schedule for businesses purchasing more than 16 kilos per week, under that kg usage, and yearly servicing.

Implementing a consistent maintenance schedule for your coffee machinery will help keep the tech engaged with your site. Keeping on top of general maintenance from seals to new shower screens, a worn-out flow meter, reduced steam pressure or perhaps the coffee machine pump is on its way out and will need to be replaced, reducing the expense of an unexpected call out.

Coffee grinders are the unsung heroes of spectacular-tasting coffee. It all starts with the grinder, and your grinder requires to have burrs (blades) changed regularly. Flat Burrs, found in a Compak F8, E8, F10, E10, replace when 600 kilos have ground through.

Conical burrs found in Master Compak grinders have a higher yield up to 1,000 kilos before those burrs require replacing.

Burr (Blade) wear signs: with on-demand coffee grinders, the 1^st sign that burrs have come to the end of their life is that your barista has to increase the time to grind the same number of grams.

Make a note of the date when new burrs have been replaced. E.g., 3.4 seconds, as the burrs become blunt, to keep the same weight in the basket (21g) the time is now 4.2 seconds. Time to look at changing them, verify that by working out last burr change to how many kilos of coffee you have ordered in that time frame.

Second Sign: baristas trying to keep the recipe consistent from shot to shot; however, is not uniform even after adjusting the grind finer and finer, however, the coffee extraction time is not reduced, and the coffee doesn't smell aromatic, the taste is flat and dull when you finally are able to extract to the recipe, which only stays stable for one or two shots, then the following is fast again even after all those finer grind adjustments 

Water filtration is vital for the well-being of your coffee machine boiler, pipes and just as important, the taste of espresso to your customers. Standard water filter changeover is usually 10,000 litres or 6 months. Make sure you have the right filtration for your setup – please call us if you are unsure, we are more than happy to assist.

Reverse osmosis systems require 6 to 8-month servicing due to the hardness of water in townships that rely on town water from bores, not water reservoirs. Filters within reverse osmosis systems can block from the sediment and this can then starve the coffee machine of water. There are other issues with not changing fillers over regularly, like the increase of TDS from filters that are no longer able to remove the junk from hard water as they are full and no longer work, however allow the water to bypass the system so as not to stave the machine of water.  

Another indication of coffee tasting flat/dull and not full flavoured is your water filters need replacing, this is a consideration when you are trying to diagnose what the issue is with your coffee not tasting as expected. I recommend when any water filtration is changed that you write the installation date for that cartridge change. This will help you with diagnosing issues associated with the coffee extraction recipe.

Daily Cleaning is a necessity. A dirty machine will ruin the best quality coffee regardless of the expertise of the barista. There is no substitute for daily cleaning, not only will your coffee taste better, but your machinery will last longer and be more reliable too.

Here are a few pointers:

Back-flush coffee machine daily with Cafetto espresso clean, no exceptions. Read up on how to activate the automatic cleaning cycle on your machine, not sure how to please call us.
Every 10kg of beans through the grinder, run a lid full of Cafetto Grinder clean through the burrs.
Always store coffee beans in an airtight container or pour beans back into bag, seal, then wash bean hopper out with soapy water, then dry after each day. Drop out and clean shower screens once a week.

I hope this information has been helpful for your business; if you need help finding a machine technician or advice, please call us on 1300 389 487