Cafiza Espresso Machine Cleaning Powder, 566 g

This works like magic. not only cleans your coffee shower and filter, but it can be used to get rid of mug stains.

This does a good job cleaning portable basket but don’t leave the portable itself soaking. It will go black

Really strips all the coffee oils off the machine filter heads and also ceramic grinder in my sage machine. Use to clean extractor fan grease too with decent but not perfect results. Lasts a long time as not much required per clean. Best with warm water to dissolve grains of powder.

FYI, Active ingredient is Sodium Hydroxide or better know as Caustic Soda, DO NOT use on alloy parts such as alloy portafilters and NEVER use as a descaler in your machine. “THIS PRODUCT IS NOT A DESCALER” It’s Safe on Stainless Steel parts only and wear gloves and eye protection. Otherwise it works well, also caustic soda is cheaper to buy.

does the job - cleans the machine well but you need to follow the instructions precisely

I wouldn't be without Cafiza. It's fantastic for backflushing my Gaggia Classic Evo Pro and keeping my portafilter, shower screen etc clean. I only use two teaspoon's worth once a week so I expect this to last a long while. For what it's worth, Cafiza 2 is cheaper because it uses slightly different ingredients to Cafiza, and Cafiza 2 lacks organic certification. Personally, I play it safe and use the original Cafiza.

I bought this after I started finding my aeropress was getting harder and harder to plunge. I mistakenly thought the reusable metal aeropress filter I use would always be fine as long as you rinsed it after use, but I think I might have been grinding my coffee too finely or something because when I finally held the filter up to the light to look at the holes in the filter I realised >90% of them were completely blocked! I tried soaking it over night with regular washing up liquid, putting it through the dishwasher, soaking it in boiling water etc... but nothing really cleared it, the majority of the filter holes remained blocked. I didn't want to use any harsher chemicals like oven cleaner (which I'd seen recommended online somewhere) and after a lot of searching I found this. One over night soak with a teaspoon of this dropped into boiling water cleaned the filter better than all the other steps I tried combined! Only a few holes in the filter remain blocked but that doesn't really bother me. I will try and do regular filter maintenance with this from now on, one tub is huge, I expect to have enough in this to last me for years! If you work in a professional setting or have specialised coffee equipment that gets used heavily, this is probably the stuff you want to be using! Totally overkill for my situation, but like I said, I have enough here to last me for years of home use.

As far as the coffee machine goes it does exactly what is says on container. But it also good for other food related utensils and crockery. Eg tea stains, burnt on food on saucepans and oven trays. And a little goes a long way.