Looking after a Miele coffee machine

[NearlySchoolTimeAgain]

I’ve seen some threads saying these aren’t all that great, but the house has come with one.

Unfortunately the instruction guide is not in English!

I’ve ordered the various cleaning solutions. The guide says use as prompted.

Any idea how often this will be? Will probably be used twice per day.

I'm guessing something will light up to tell you? We don't have a Miele, but I rinse the brew group every night and descale once a month. We use ours several times a day every day.

It’s saying it every time we use it. Maybe because it’s not been done for a while.

The tablets are about £11 each. Would be expensive to use daily!

I suspect the tablets are citric acid based for descaling.

What needs to be cleaned every time? I'm pretty sure our manual said the brew group needed to be cleaned every few days but we should just clean it under a running tap. I do this every night so it doesn't get forgotten.

It’s this part that mentions a tablet. There are three types of cleaning product needed I think. Milk pipe cleaner, coffee degreaser and descaler.

www.manualslib.com/manual/680664/Miele-Built-In-Coffee-Machine.html?page=66

Looks similar to ours, but there's nothing in our manual about degreasing the brew group. Wonder what's in the tablets?

The descaling tablets are probably mostly citric acid - that's what our are. I don't buy them. Instead, I boil half a kettle of water and then add a scoop of citric acid. After half an hour, the kettle is descaled and I use the water to do the coffee machine.

We live in a hard water area and limescale is a problem.

What product are you supposed to use daily?

The message comes on every use but I think that’s because it needs doing and hasn’t been.

It needs doing every 200 uses - so two coffees per day is once every three months. That’s fine at about £1 per tablet.

Milk cleaning sachets are £40 a box but’s for 100 and weekly use so again not too bad. Although apparently some people just use washing up liquid.

Not sure how frequent descaling is - we live in a hard water area - will see when the light comes on!

My Jura will prompt for a cleaning cycle (takes about two water fills to complete), but after cleaning it stops. Definitely not a daily thing.

Milk cleaning you can avoid by not using the milk side :) That's what we do, microwave the milk separately then coffee on top. It's a high-effort form of laziness though!

Degreasing tablets arrived today.

Judging by the water that came out they’re mild washing up liquid.

I’ve got 50 uses until descaling is needed.

I think I’ll save using the milk side for winter / visitors. Seems a bit faffy and I have a microwave.....

Google the model online and you should be able to get an English maintenance manual.

We lost ours and had to download a new one (not Miele) because I couldn’t remember the descaling procedure.