Yesterday morning I picked up my new (second hand 500,- euro) Giotto in an Espresso-shop in Amsterdam. The machine has been used to serve people (potential buyers of machine’s or coffee) a drink for over two years… The salesmen – a very friendly guy, about my age: 30 – said during me inspecting my new purchase, he had cleaned the machine… but the only thing I saw was a dirty machine, with spots all over it…
I paid him and drove home to drop off Giotto, went to work and came home at 6 O Clock in the evening… During the day my feelings about this purchase were very mixed. I was glad I was finally the owner of a Giotto, and on the other hand I was very insecure about the state of the machine as I had no guaranty… and the spots on the outside meant a lot to me when somebody mentioned he’d cleaned the machine…
After diner and putting the children to bed, I could finally begin with Giotto. I removed Elektra to another area and started cleaning the outside which was easy to clean… Then I started backflushing with coffeedetergent. I think I backflushed her 30 times and still the water was brown…
Because the boiler temp was a bit over the green area I unscrewed the top to adjust the thermostat… but when I lit up the top of the machine a very penetrating smell of old water infiltrated my nose… So I decided first to clean the interior of the machine thoroughly… My wife came by and smelled too… She said: ‘what have you bought? Are you crazy?’
And then the big surprise came… While cleaning I found half under the boiler, hidden, or stuck, I don’t know… A big, fat, DEAD MOUSE!
To go short: My wife declared not to drink EVER any cup out of this machine… in the same time feeling very sorry with me, as I was so happy with the opportunity to buy a Giotto at last…
After removing the mouse (which I dropped ‘accidentally’ at Petra’s (my wife) feet a couple of times… I broke open Giotto and started cleaning VERY thoroughly! And while cleaning I was thinking about a documentary I saw on Discovery Chanel about swollen corps of animals in the forest and that you can determine the date/hour of death by measuring the smell and swelling… This mouse was not swollen that much and the smell was a bit of sick-making sweet… so I think the mouse went through one of the holes in the bottom the day before I picked Giotto up… (that was some sort of relief)
The incident with the mouse was some sort of relieving in general too: I had my doubts about the maintenance done on this machine… but with the mouse all bad luck was mine already so it could not become any worse anymore…
Cleaning was done and I put her all together… Switched the power on and what happened: after a couple of minutes water was spouting out of the boiler! The valve on top seemed to malfunction. I shut of the machine again, unscrewed the top and unscrewed the valve… After cleaning I screwed it on again, but the same water came out. Then I went upstairs to my computer to search the internet (alt.coffee). I did not find my exact problem but did got an idea… As it seemed the ‘internal’ boiler in the boiler (the one for frothing was the one where the valve was misbehaving…) did not fill up, I unscrewed the valve again and filled the boiler manually with a funnel. And before reassembling the machine again, I pulled out all the contacts of electrical wiring… and indeed: I found one on top of the boiler which had very much ‘white-sticky-powder-burnspots’ on it. I scratched it with a knife, thinking the contact would be perfect again… So I basically did two things: filling up the boiler and cleaning the contact point (and oh, yes, I put the thermostat a litter lower too…). Reassembled her again and turning the power switch on: Everything worked…
It was two o’clock after midnight at that point and I had to work the next day (saturday)… But with the mouse burned on my retina I decided to flush the boilers too with coffee-detergent… I was busy till 4 o’clock, as the detergent was that hard to get out…
This morning, Giotto was shining and performing like a race horse. I had my first cup of espresso and it was delicious… I made a cappa for Petra (after half an hour talking about how thoroughly I cleaned her) and the foam was as good as Elektra’s (which I marked as a froth wonder…)
In the evening I came home, switched on the power switch and was still feeling a bit of insecure about the ‘stability’ of Giotto… She did fine (although there always’s seems to come some water out of the valve on top of the boiler… this sputtering only lasts for two seconds, and then it closes… so I don’t think this is a real problem anymore… Or is it abnormal?
And what a joy to make an espresso, another espresso, two cappa’s, another espresso and another without all the problems I’ve had with Elektra being so picky...
I LOVE THIS MACHINE
(although I had some pretty nasty dreams about the damned mouse last night…)
Michel