Collection: Urnex

Urnex makes the cleaning products most cafes in the world actually use. The brand has specialised in coffee equipment cleaning for nearly ninety years, and its products target the three things that ruin coffee and kill machines: coffee oils, residues and mineral deposits.

Choosing Urnex is less about brand loyalty than about using a product formulated for the job. A dish soap will not shift the oil film inside a group head, and a general descaler is not safe for every machine. Urnex builds a separate product for each task.

Brand Overview | Urnex

Established in 1936 and founded in New York by Samuel Fleisher, Urnex has grown into the global reference point for coffee equipment maintenance.

The brand's history runs alongside the evolution of coffee culture itself. Urnex pioneered products built specifically for the challenges coffee creates in brewing equipment, and in the 1980s introduced Cafiza, the first cleaning powder designed for espresso machines. That was the moment machine maintenance became a category rather than an afterthought.

Since then the product line has expanded to cover espresso machines, coffee grinders and drip brewers, with a separate formulation for each.

Quality and Craftsmanship | Urnex

Urnex products are engineered around the components they clean. Cafiza is alkaline, which is what dissolves coffee oils. Dezcal is acidic, which is what dissolves limescale. Rinza is formulated for dairy proteins. Each targets one problem properly rather than all three badly.

The brand uses high grade, food safe materials throughout, which matters when the residue passes through the same path your coffee does. Every product is rinse safe and tested against the metals, seals and plastics used in modern machines.

That specificity is the whole argument. Using the wrong product does nothing at best, and at worst strips a seal or corrodes a boiler.

Range of Products by Urnex | Cleaning Solutions for Espresso Machines

Urnex covers four distinct jobs. Most home setups need at least three of them.

Cleaning removes coffee oils from the group head, portafilter and baskets. Descaling removes mineral deposits from inside the boiler. Milk line cleaning handles dairy residue. Grinder cleaning lifts oil off the burrs.

Coffee oils build up within days, so cleaning is weekly. Scale builds over months, so descaling is every one to three depending on your water hardness. Neither product does the other's work.

Urnex Cafiza Powder and Tablets

Cafiza is the product the brand built its reputation on, and the one most people arrive looking for.

Cafiza C26 Powder is the 900g espresso machine cleaning powder. Powder costs less per use than tablets and lets you vary the dose between a quick weekly backflush and a deep soak of removable parts. Around half a teaspoon in the blind basket is enough for a home machine, since excess powder simply takes more rinse cycles to clear.

Cafiza E16 comes as 100 pre measured cleaning tablets for espresso machines, which removes dosing guesswork entirely.

Cafiza E31 is formulated for semi automatic machines, targeting coffee oils and the stains and residues they leave behind. Specialised cleaning tablets, straightforward to use, and only a few steps to a properly clean machine.

Cafiza E46 suits both semi automatic and fully automatic machines, supplied as 100 tablets.

Urnex Puro is an alternative espresso machine cleaning powder doing the same job as Cafiza, so choose between them on pack size and availability rather than performance.

Whichever you choose, your machine needs to accept a blind basket for backflushing. If it does not, soak the portafilter and baskets in solution and clean the group head by hand.

Urnex Dezcal

Dezcal is the acidic descaler for the boiler, thermoblock and water lines, and it is the product that decides how long your machine lives.

Hard water is the main reason home machines fail in India. The symptom is not an error code, it is a brew that runs slower than it used to and a cup that arrives cooler, which most people blame on the coffee first. Filtered water in the tank stretches the interval considerably.

Urnex Rinza

Rinza is formulated for milk residue, circulated through automatic milk systems or used to soak steam wands and lines.

This is a separate problem from both coffee oil and scale. Dried milk blocks wand tips, turns rancid fast and neither a cleaner nor a descaler touches it. Run it weekly at home, daily in any setting serving milk drinks. Purging the wand after every use and rinsing your milk pitcher reduces how often you need it.

Urnex Grindz and Scoopz Brush

Grindz G01 is a food safe cleaning granule you run through the grinder like beans, lifting the oil residue a brush cannot reach. Monthly is enough for most home use. Do not substitute rice, which is harder than coffee and can misalign the burrs.

Scoopz Brush is a precision tool combining a grinder brush with a built in measuring scoop, a two in one solution for coffee enthusiasts.

• Ergonomic design, with a handle that gives a comfortable grip and lets you manoeuvre inside the grinder for precise cleaning
• Versatile enough for other accessories beyond the grinder itself
• Compact and portable, which suits anyone who takes their setup with them
• Easy to clean, which is what keeps it in regular use

Burrs collect coffee oil the same way a group head does, and rancid oil puts a stale note into every fresh grind. Whichever coffee grinder you own, brushing weekly and running granules monthly keeps it performing for years longer.

Cleaning Kits | Urnex

If you would rather buy the routine complete than assemble it piece by piece, Urnex offers a Cleaning Starter Kit, a Cleaning Kit Combo for Espresso Machine, and two Cleaning Kit Combos for Fully Automatic Espresso Machines.

The fully automatic combos make the most sense for machines with internal brew units and milk circuits, since all of those need attention on the same schedule. For the wider range including other brands, see the full cleaning equipment collection.

User Experience | Urnex

The feedback on these products is consistent, and it is usually about the same thing: coffee that had slowly gone bitter tastes clean again after a proper backflush.

That is the part people underestimate. Coffee oil builds up invisibly over weeks, the decline is gradual, and almost everyone blames the beans before the machine.

A schedule that works in practice:

Daily, purge and wipe the steam wand, knock out the puck, rinse the basket and empty the drip tray.

Weekly, backflush with Cafiza, soak the portafilter and baskets, brush the group head and run Rinza through the milk lines.

Monthly, clean the grinder with Grindz and deep soak removable parts.

Every one to three months, descale with Dezcal based on your water hardness.

Closing Lines

The daily steps take seconds and the weekly ones a few minutes, and between them they decide whether an espresso machine lasts four years or twelve.

You can buy the full range of original Urnex cleaning products at Something's Brewing.