I’ve been given a coffee machine by a friend who didn’t use it.
I’ve had a couple of goes without any coffee in there to see how it works (no instructions)
Clearly not used for a while as the water that comes out is a nice rusty (I assume) brown. I’ve cleaned all the bits I can and the water doesn’t smell of coffee so I’m confident it’s not residual coffee.

How can I clean it out properly?

make and model would be a help

I’ve had a similar experience. I used descaler then rinsed it through a few times. The descaled gets rid of not only limescale but any other crap that might be in there.

Delonghi caffe treviso is the model. So descaler an option?

Definitatley. Just found this from a quick google that may be of help?

Cafe Treviso advice

http://www.delonghi.com/en-gb/customer-experience/instruction-manuals get the model number and bobs your mothers brother

Thanks guys
Moose – that link will only let me scroll down a little on my phone but will crack out the laptop later
Cheers!

Just cleaning my machine this morning. I use this: http://www.hasbean.co.uk/collections/cleaning-products/products/cafetto-evo-powder its advantage over the cleaner I used to use is that it’s essentially oxygen bleach rather than a caustic agent.

Descaling shouldn’t be necessary if you’re using softened water in the machine. The brown tint to your water is more likely to be coffee gunk than rust. The machine’s innards should be rust-resistant. Brass, copper, plastic, maybe aluminium.

Enjoy a cleaner tasting brew when you’re done.

De-scaling is important but so is backflushing. The Puly Caf backflush powder you can get dissolves the residues that build up. And a backflush with a blind basket gets into places you can’t reach with a normal low-pressure de-scale.

If you want even better coffee you should use Puly Grind to get rid of all the gunk that builds up on your grinder blades.

I have a Gaggia Classic and from time to time it gets a right good strip down and you can clean out quite a bit of build up within the head unit.

I get all my cleaning stuff from Happy Donkey along with my favourite Brazilian blend beans.

My machine is only a year old but when it rinses/warms up the water before using the machine the water is slightly brown. (And it rinses before it turns off so not coffee from the last go.

+1 what bigjohn said
Mine gets a thorough cleaning every other month and I’m in a softwater area

backflushing is good advice for people with machines that have a 3 way solenoid but for home machines like the above it’s just going to kill it and not do any cleaning.