backflushing and vacuuming

last night i backflushed silvia. it's a required procedure for commercial espresso machines but not recommended for home machines. still, it's widely accepted as a good idea for silvia, and in fact, my retailer provided me with the necessary equipment and an instruction sheet on how to do it.

so i did it. the point is to thoroughly clean the brewpath: to dissolve and flush out all the accumulated coffee gunk that gets lodged inside the brewhead and the three-way valve. so now silvia's insides are all clean and sparkly.

that finished, i took a hand-vac to rocky. i found his nooks and his crannies and sucked the grounds from them. i used a fork to remove caked-on coffee gunk from the spout. rocky is as clean as can be (okay, not really, i could have done more with disassembly).

so how does it affect the coffee?

the idea of both procedures is to cut down on bitterness -- and that it did. still, the first shot was lacking something, or boasting something new: a disturbing flatness in the middle of the cup. i became suspicious that i was drinking cleansing fluid and i pitched the rest of the cup.

the next cup was a ristretto and i didn't notice anything special. i'm not sure if i benefitted from the backflush (inarguably, the cleaning of rocky was a good thing), but at least i feel nice and clean on behalf of silvia.

once i get back to my preferred espresso blend i'll know more.