Don't Touch The Machine

General Guideline.

But seriously, dirty machines? Not having it. To be honest, I'm not the cleanest person who works at Verve, but typically speaking, when it comes to handling our GB5, I follow a kind of rule that I've made for myself. As far as I'm concerned, there is only one exception to the rule, which I'll explain later. For now, here's my rule:

There are only 6 sets of places that I should ever need to touch. They are:

-Steam wands
-Steam knobs
-Portafilters
-Pump Pressure Buttons
-Boiler Water Switch
-Legs

I think every thing up there is pretty explanatory, except for the legs. I only touch these when I need to adjust the position of the machine.

The only exception is cleaning. Pretty much everything is fair game when the intention is cleaning. The only time you should need to touch the top of the machine, or the dispersion blocks / screens, or the face, or the tray, etc., is when you're you're making them fresh and clean. Ideally, there shouldn't be too many scuffs on the face of the machine, but it's not uncommon to find stray espresso here and there.

So that's my thing.

-Ian.

P.S. Props to whomever can tell what the inspiration for my design was. And only props.