Acid Bath and the Wooly Mammoth

I wanted to figure out a good way to clean up all the brass and copper tubing in an efficient manner that wasn't too corrosive, and would be food-safe-friendly. No one wants to taste Brasso in their Doppio Con Panna (double espresso with whipped cream). I checked the wonderful world wide web and perused the forums of coffeesnob.com.au, coffeegeek.com, and Home-Barista.com to see what was suggested.

The answer, Citric Acid. I think the suggested solution was 2-4 tablespoons of citric acid to one gallon of water. I started surfing Amazon and Ebay for sources after striking out in the local health food stores, and couldn't seem to find anything larger than small containers of 8-12 ounces which cost around $8, and then $4-5 shipping. Then I struck gold on Ebay. $25 for 5 pounds of citric acid. Yeah, it was a little overkill, but that $25 included shipping, and who knew what else I might want to descale in the future. Maybe steam punk would emerge into the mainstream, and I would be the man to polish Jules Verne's time machine. Either way, I may have ended up on a government watch list, or at least a bath-bomb sewing circle for ordering that much in bulk.

I used the top of a large Rubbermaid storage bin and warmed up a gallon pot of water on the stove as heat speeds up the reaction of the acid solution with the metal. I didn't heat all the water, but just enough to raise the temp to around 120 degrees in the container which was already half full with a gallon of cold water. I dissolved about 4-8 tablespoons of citric acid (looks like table salt) into the water and then added the tubing. The reaction was almost instantaneous. The copper started brightening up and losing its dull brown, turning almost pink. The brass started shining through the grime as it fell away. It was pretty amazing. I let it soak for a good 20-30 minutes, occasionally arranging the odd shaped tubing so that it would all get exposed. The soak also broke up most of the mineral deposits inside the tubes. I took all the tubing out rinsing it the best I could, and set it out to dry on a towel on my workbench. I picked up a couple of small pieces and tried some very fine steel wool on it. The shine it brought out was brilliant!

Over the course of the next couple of months when I had a half hour or more to spare, I would sneak down to the garage and shine up the tubing with steel wool. I cleaned it meticulously to the point of shining all 6 sides of each brass nut as well as the top and bottom. There are shiny parts on this machine that will probably never see the light of day again, but I know they're in there.





After finishing up with the brass and copper parts, I decided to clean up the stainless steel back plate and the two stainless steel shims the drip tray is supported from. Again, from the wisdom of the forums, I learned that citric acid is bad for ferrous metals and that the micro-abrasive qualities in car polish would work wonders... unless I wanted to spend the money to have the plates shined professionally by a fabrication shop. (I didn't). While not all the scratches came out, I was able to get the haze removed from the stainless and it looked good enough for my tastes.

I gave the boiler the same citric acid soak treatment as the tubing and used a brass brush to scrub it the best I could. I wanted to really sand it smooth and give it a near mirror finish, but the welds around the connections and seams would not have supported that level of detail and to grind them smooth might reduce the integrity of the boiler. Who wants to have 17 liters of scalding hot water and steam under 15 bars (atmospheres) of pressure explode due to manic cosmetic attention to detail? Not me. I got it clean and confirmed there wasn't any scale inside the boiler which was surprisingly clean. I thought that 5 years of having water sloshing around inside would have been more damaging, but it held up wonderfully.



Now I had a bigger fish to fry before I could start reconstructing. THE GROUP HEADS OF DEATH! I had to get these cleaned up and the fossilized gaskets out before putting much of anything else back onto the frame. But I'll save that for the next post.

Frame the shot

After a rather quick dis-assembly, I ended up with a pile of copper tubing, a box of electrical cables and wiring harnesses, and a dirty frame with a few rust spots on it. I had a box of high gloss black spray paint and grey primer from another "find" I never got around to refinishing. The boiler mounts and electric cable mounts were still riveted to the frame, so I drilled those out to replace with some screws and bolts I picked up for the task.

Before painting, I wanted at the very least to sand down the rust spots to the bare metal to prevent the paint from bubbling. I used 120 grit to start with and worked down to 400. I used the water hose and a brush to scrub the grime and bug crust off the rest and gave it plenty of time to dry. As I was doing this in the winter and the garage wasn't heated, I would put the frame inside to warm up, then take it out and put a coat of primer on, let it dry, and then bring it back inside to warm up again before the next coat. I did the same with the paint. In hindsight, I should have spent more time with prep work and sanded between the primer and paint coats, but considering every bit of the frame would be covered, there was little need for a car show paint job.

I cleaned up the galvanized boiler mounts and other mounts and scrubbed them clean with a brass brush and gave them a good rinse and dry. I spray painted them white just to give it a little more dressed up look when the machine was open, but unfortunately couldn't remove the mount from the pressure switch, so I left it as it was and just cleaned up the grime. Happy to have something clean and restored, I found the hardware for the frame I had labeled and set aside in bags and put it back together. I screwed the big rubber adjustable feet on the bottom and got things leveled up. I also attached the white mounts with the screws and bolts and attached the plastic drain box. Now I had a foundation to build the machine back onto.

Always Dive in Head First

When I first brought the machine home, I took the cup warmer tray off the top and looked down inside with very little idea what anything was aside from the obvious boiler, and what specifically I needed to do to get the boiler out to drain the water. Now that I was ready to "do this thing," I located the few screws that held the rear panel on the machine and removed them exposing all the tasty contents of 5 years of abandonment.

The accumulation of steam and condensation served as an oily glue which trapped any dirt, dust, spilled coffee, or grime that might have been floating around in the restaurant. I saw a few Sweet n' Low packets which I thought might have been accidentally dropped into the top of the cup tray until I realized that they were arranged in a nest. A mouse nest, replete with droppings. Mice weren't the only inhabitants as several insect carcasses were found near the power switch unit, which I guess warmed up and made a nice place to live while it was in operation. It was becoming very apparent that this machine was going to need a good cleaning. Even though none of what I could see so far touched the final espresso product, I just couldn't make coffee with a machine I knew was full of mouse turds.

Armed with a Canon Powershot 850SD IS digital camera and an assortment of wrenches, I started removing the copper tubing, wiring, and connections inside. I made sure to take photos of the broad area and macro shots of the individual connections so I would have a reference for reassembly. In no time at all, I had the motor, pump, and boiler out and sitting on the work bench accompanied by a pile of copper tubing. All that was left was the frame, the boiler water level gauge, pressure gauge, and wiring connections.















I had about enough for one evening, and with the boiler removed, I did manage to slosh a bit of water out of it. However, at this point I knew I wasn't just going to put it back together. It needed some TLC to restore its former glory, but I had to figure out just how to do that.

Retail, Re-Use, Rebuild

"Un'arte tutta italiana"

Espresso is a synonym for Italy, the Italian art to live. The art to appreciate the pleasures in life.

I've had several people ask me what in the world I'm going to do with a 2 group commercial espresso machine that runs on 220V, eats 3200 watts, and requires a water line plumbed into the machine. Honestly, at one point I was happy to convert it to a coffee table and all the glorious punning associated with making a table from a giant immovable coffee machine. However, I think the real appeal is summed up in the quote above. The art to appreciate the pleasures in life. I wanted the pursuit of the perfect espresso to be as enjoyable as the taste once this adventure is complete.

I can't tell what year my machine is based on the information provided on the model/serial number sticker, but I found a few component numbers on the internals that leads me to believe this was built some time in the 90's. Either way, it's identified as:

Model: HE Michelangelo 2
Serial Number 99041939
Voltage: 208/220
Wattage: 3200

I started looking for any information possible on these machines, what the used ones sell for now, what they used to retail for, and what their current comprable product offering included. To complicate things a bit, the original Italian manufacturer licensed a Heidelberg Germany factory to sell them and eventually to start manufacturing them. After a few years the two companies broke up to become ECM (Espresso Coffee Machines) and ECM Manufacture (German Version). ECM Manufacture went on to improve upon the original design eventually releasing the Technika, Mechanika etc. Mine appears to have been manufactured in Milan, Italy at the original ECM factory. They are still in business as far as I know and are still manufacturing and selling the Michelangelo A2. For a US contact, I found Burgess Enterprises through the forums. They service and sell a variety of espresso machines, grinders, coffee carts, and even provide barrista training. I contacted them to see if they had any user manuals, parts catalogs, etc... that I could use in discerning what to do with my machine. Don Paschal quickly responded with a schematics / parts catalog, an ECM Sorrento Maintenance document, and a user manual. Very helpful and I will most likely contact him as I find seals, gaskets, and other parts that may need replacement in the rebuild. I've also located through the various forums www.CoffeeParts.com which is based in Australia. Just the cardboard-esq gasket that fits between the front plate and the group head is $21 each. The heating element is $120. The pump $180. I could sell this thing off in pieces and still come out ahead. I can't imagine a Harlem junk car type landscape with the bare frame and a few scrap pieces of tubing hanging out, so I think I'll stick to the rebuild and be careful not to destroy anything expensive to replace in the process.

So, now I had a parts schematic and a general idea of what to do to operate the machine should I ever get it working again. If I decided I was going to sell it after fixing it, I wanted to know what kind of ballpark market price these machines fetch used. Turns out... a lot more than I paid for it. I've found several postings on www.CoffeeGeek.com and www.home-barista.com where people have found an old ECM Michelangelo A2 for $1000, and their post was followed by accolades of "what a great deal you've found" and "even if you put another $1000 - $1500 into it, you can get your money back out of it". Reconditioned and rebuilt machines are fetching somewhere between $2200 and $4000. With that said, it looks as though new, you had to shell out between $5200 to $7800 for a new ECM Michelangelo A2. I think the upper bracket included the A3 which was a 3 group setup and featured a larger boiler. Even as I write this, there's a single group ECM Sorrento for sale on Craiglist in Greenville, SC for $1600. So... I got a $2200-$4000 espresso machine for $125. That just feels good.

In the Beginning...

Being a chronic coffee connoisseur (addict) and Craigslist devotee, it was not long before I found the bargain of a lifetime. Someone in beautiful Parrotsville, TN (near Newport) was selling a 2 group commercial espresso machine. There were no pictures and very little information available, but for $150, I had to jump on it. I was still using the Salton espresso machine my sister had given me to use in college and I had all but worn it out. On my way out, my girlfriend (now wife) Krissy called me to see what I was doing that night.

"Driving to Parrotsville to buy an espresso machine off Craigslist."

After a long 2 hour drive, I arrived at the pickup location... some kind of ranch / wilderness resort / retreat with cabins and a dining hall. They would take people out on horseback rides or fishing on the nearby lakes and creeks. The espresso machine lay inside the dining hall. It was back in a dark kitchen and walking back there I had a momentary vision of the worst possible outcome of being in the middle of nowhere to pick up a deal too good to be true. The walk-in freezer could hold a poker game worth of corpses alone, not to mention the ample rural burial land. But there in the faint light I saw it... or at least something large and appliance-shaped. An ECM Michelangelo A2 commercial 2 group espresso machine. This thing was enormous and I was beginning to question how I was going to fit it in the car, much less carry it.

The guy told me his parents ran the ranch for several years before handing it over to him and they purchased the machine 5 years prior for $500, but never hooked it up or tried it to see if it worked. It had just been sitting in the kitchen waiting for someone to do something with it. With no guarantee that the thing would even work, I was able to negotiate a price of $125 and we proceeded to carry it to my little Saturn 4 door sedan. Due to the height and depth of it, we couldn't fit it in the trunk, so with some considerable man-handling of the 100lb + behemoth, we wedged it in the back seat. I drove home having no idea what I was going to do with it, but thrilled it was mine.

I called a neighbor to help me unload it and get it in the house. We put it on my dining room table and it spanned the width and half the length. I was a little concerned it would collapse the legs, but it seemed to hold. From that point over the next several months, I moved it to the floor, back to the table, and eventually to the garage on a workbench where it sat while I updated my house to put it on the market.

I moved it to the basement garage when I moved in with Krissy, and there it sat while we planned a wedding and repaired various things around the house. Then one day, I had 4 hours completely free in the afternoon and it was time to see what was inside that beast. At the very least, I wanted to drain the water that had been sloshing around inside the boiler for 6 years or more.