Less than two months after getting my C2000 back from Capresso, it started misbehaving. The first sign was taking about 5 seconds longer than usual to draw a coffee. Then, I noticed that the expelled espresso pucks had changed from being dry, nearly solid pucks to crumbly globs of wet grounds. Also, less coffee was produced with the same settings.
Finally, two lights on the front panel started blinking. The manual said that this indicated the thermoblock was overheating and that I should run the frother to allow the machine to dispel some heat. That didn’t help.
So, I mournfully dragged myself over to the phone and called Capresso Customer Support to see if it was still under repair warranty. Instead, Moira (sp?) told me that most likely the coffee maker was clogged. Since the machine couldn’t expel the hot coffee fast enough, it was overheating.
Then she told me to use a dry cloth to wipe any coffee grounds from on or around the screen. She said that if that didn’t work, I should run a cleaning cycle using one of the cleaning tablets. I cleaned the screen, and now my machine is making perfect coffee again!
The screen is a little hard to reach on a C2000. After removing the tray, look inside and up to the left. You should see a metal disk with small perforations. Or, in my case, a bumpy, dark brown disk. Quite a bit of grounds came off the screen.
I don’t remember seeing this cleaning tip in the manual. But, now I do remember reading a comment on Coffee Geek that you should periodically clean the screen on super automatics like my Capresso.
Cleaning the screen possibly could have even saved me from the last repair. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pressure that had been building up before had damaged the O-ring, since the O-ring that tore went around the outside of the screen.