Happy New Year, welcome to 2013.

Here’s to new beginnings. Cheers! Salute! Sláinte!

We often toast to the health of our family, friends, and neighbors during this time of year. Why not toast your espresso machine’s well being too?

One of the most important preventive maintenance tasks you can perform on your espresso machine is regular basic group maintenance. Just think of it as a ritual. Your espresso machine and you are about to spend some quality time getting to know each other. And we’ll do our part too. In addition to offering free shipping on the largest selection of parts available, Espresso Parts is committed to sending group maintenance reminders all throughout the year.

This is your 1st group service of the New Year. We’d love for you to join us. It’s time to order your parts and tools.

The Importance of Espresso Machine Group Maintenance

It’s common knowledge that minor espresso machine group maintenance services should be performed quarterly or at the very least, for lower volume shops, twice a year. We are espresso machine group head maintenance evangelists here at Espresso Parts and we try our best to preach it!

We also recommend replacing your group gaskets, group screens, and portafilter baskets all at the same time, following a very thorough group head cleaning. When backflushing we recommend using Espresso Parts Espresso Machine Cleaner.

Why Quarterly?

Here are 2 reasons why we think it is a good idea.

Flavor: Build up of coffee oils around the gasket and above/within your group screen can seriously affect your espresso’s flavor.

Preventive Maintenance: Over time your gaskets can become “baked” in place making them difficult to replace at best.

Changing the gasket, screen and basket together: Over time the mating surface and bottom of the portafilter basket will inevitably wear. By the time symptoms like leaking portafilters become noticeable you may have a bigger problem on your hands. Basket replacement suddenly becomes critical and expedited shipping charges may have to be paid to get the new portafilter baskets quickly. Your new $7-$12 portafilter basket just cost you $40 or so. Don’t let it happen to you.

Do you use some groups more than others? Most places do. Even so it’s best practice to perform the maintenance on all of your groups at the same time. That way your machine remains consistent and uniform regardless of which groups get used.

Maintenance Tutorials

Over the years Espresso Parts has developed a set of tutorials for general espresso machine maintenance.

• Espresso Machine Backflushing (video and written tutorial)
• Changing Espresso Machine Group Gaskets (written tutorial)
• E61 Group Gasket Replacement & Maintenance (written tutorial)
• and a host of others in our Espresso/Coffee Tutorial section.

Parts Ship Free
at Espresso Parts

Espresso Parts covers your ground shipping for ALL domestic deliveries (Now including Alaska and Hawaii). Now including Alaska and Hawaii!!!

Make sure to use the coupon code PARTSSHIPFREE. It can be entered during your check out process on the check out cart page.

The Parts

Below you’ll find a selection of group gaskets, portafilter baskets, group screens, and even some kits that contain all you might need to perform your next group maintenance. We stock parts for most makes and models of espresso equipment.

Performance Upgrades

Are you the type that is always looking to push the threshold of quality and consistency? If so this might be an ideal time to consider HQ Parts. HQ stands for High Quality and our HQ Parts Line is made up of aftermarket precision upgrade components designed to take you, your machine, and your espresso to the next level. Our Sproline offerings such as group screens and steam tips are made to last. When kept clean in conjunction with your daily backflushing regime they will substantially outlast common manufacturer made components.

Need Parts Assistance? We Can Help.

If you can’t locate what everything you need below you can find parts specific to your machine in our Commercial Espresso Machine Parts section. If you are still having trouble finding the parts you need try our online customer service chat or or give us a call at (800) 459-5594 or (360) 357-7781. We are available to help from 8AM to 4PM PST, Monday through Friday.