# steam wand cleaning - sage barista express



## totalwise (Jun 18, 2020)

Hi 

For a few months now, the steam wand was performing poorlyon my sage barista express.

I thought I might need to order a milk forth cleaner, was about to order something from amazon until I tried something different. I took out the tip of the forther and used a cocktail stick to scoop the hole from the other way - and and lot of brown/black muck came out. I dont know if it's rust, or dried milk or what. But now it's steaming like new again. 

Really need a mini pipe clean (maybe an interdental flossing brush) to clean it from the other side. I used the needle like device to clean the steam wand, given that that's what was supplied with the machine I thought that might do the trick. 

Unfortunately that's not good enough - you're just pushing the muck buck into the steam wand to temporarily unblock it. The only way to really clean it is the flush it out from the inside out.

Also I did the stupid thing of running the steam for 2-3 minutes to try and blast the stuff out, thinking any milk residue will surely come out - it doesn't work like that unfortunately, it needs to be scraped out. Hopefully I haven't dmaaged the boiler/pump by running it so much.


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## ImthatGuy (Dec 4, 2015)

Not sure whether this will help, but to clean the steam wand on my Barista Pro, I periodically fill a deep mug with boiling water, immerse the wand in it and leave it for a few hours/overnight. The push some steam through the wand. Works well for me. 

Also,, you might find a good descale gets rid of some of the gunk


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## TobyAnscombe (Sep 28, 2014)

You need to use a milk protein cleaner - this will get shot of the gunk. Don't use a descaler, thats a totally different product.

FWIW I use Eccellente Milk System Cleaner (250 ml) but many others are on the market


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