A Note From the Founder:
I've always loved the morning espresso ritual. Grind the beans. Tamp them down. pull the shot. Steam the milk. But years ago this routine ground to a halt when water and steam started blowing past the group head of my trusty espresso machine.
I had no idea how to fix it and when I looked into fixing it the options were a frustrating; $150 bench fee from the local shop, or ship it off to the manufacturer for four weeks. The local shops wouldn't do house calls which meant that doing it myself seemed like the obvious answer. After all, how hard can it be!
Boy was I wrong. I spent hours digging through manuals, old company archives, and forums trying to first figure out what was wrong and then what parts I needed. I'm not proud to admit that I ended up ordering the same set of O-rings, just slightly different sizes, three separate times, paying shipping on each.
What I found is that espresso machines don't fail because they are broken; they fail because they're not maintained. You wouldn’t drive your car for three years without changing the oil or rotating the tires and your coffee machine is the same, just with O-rings, a chemical flushing. Like most though I didn’t know this. Instead I ran my machine until something broke.
In the years since my espresso machine first failed I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole. I've continued to scroll through the forums and manuals, building out custom maintenance kits and instructions for friends. I don’t know why but I just genuinely have a really enjoyable time learning about espresso machine internals and their maintenance.
Over time and what led me to finally start this business was my belief that doing espresso machine maintenance at home should be easy. You shouldn't have to be spending huge amounts of money, or send your machine off for weeks at a time, you should be able to fix it yourself on a Sunday afternoon.
The kits and instructional guides I've put together have all been built around a single standard: Everything you need in one place. The Parts, The Tools, The Knowledge. You shouldn't have to go through the same struggles I did.
Thanks for trusting us with your morning ritual.
-Kyle
Founder, Espresso Overhaul