My Andreja Premium has been leaking lately around the portafilter.  Figure that the likely culprit is the grouphead gasket – almost 2 years of baking in the E61 head, and it has been pretty much carbonized.  Removing the gasket was pretty tricky, well, at least until I decided to use Google to find a how-to article.  Came across Espresso! My Espresso!, a no-frills site with lots of information!  How-to #13 was the one I needed, and after a quick read, I had the grouphead gasket out in less than 30 seconds!

The screen had to be cleaned up – I was a little slack in the weekly backflushes – but I did make sure they were done at least every 2-3 weeks.  Every week from now on!  And I won’t wait 2 years to replace the gasket again – maybe do it every 6 months to a year.

Instead of buying the gasket locally (which I kind of had to do this time around with all the leaking), I’m going to order a half dozen online.  $5 US each instead of $16 from CaffeTech! The price you pay for convenience I suppose.

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