Descale your espresso machines regularly!

SouthernChap

SouthernChap

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Dear God alive.

I have just run 13 sachets of Puly descaler through my 2003 Gaggia Classic.

I'm not convinced the ebay seller was entirely honest about the 'complete descale and clean' anyway but when I disassembled it to do my pre-use checks and fit the PID controller, the boiler was reasonably tidy inside so eh.

I've since abused the poor thing for the past 9 months by only descaling it once. My defence that I ran out of descaler and kept forgetting to order some more is a pretty poor one (I have been running Puly Cafe through it weekly, though, since I have tons of that!).

So now I've done that and flushed it through with a couple of tanks of clean water, it's a clean with the Puly Cafe and another flush through, a new BWT water filter and a run of the auto-tune on the PID, I get to start dialling in the beans I have. Hopefully I'm still pretty close on grind settings, temperature and pressure, because I'm a little low on beans.:oops:

Oddly, I'd never let my tools (hand or machine) get to this state.
 
Good reminder. My drip style coffee maker needs this treatment. It's been about a year since its last. I use citric acid. With my last machine, vinegar was used and that machine still works after many years of daily service.
 
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I've used both citric acid and vinegar in the past and they work well for drip style machines but I have a vague and not entirely scientific feeling that the Puly descaler tends to do a better job with espresso machines, maybe because there are more nooks and crannies for scale to build in an espresso machine, I dunno. ;)

I've now set a monthly reminder to descale and a yearly reminder to buy descaler! :grin:
 
markba633csi said:
We have very soft water here. I haven't descaled my Expobar since I got it- 7 years?
Guess it couldn't hurt LOL
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That's one less thing you have to worry about. :)

I've got "moderately hard' water here in West Sussex. That's a downside as far a the requirement for regular (but not super frequent) descaling but an upside that the water does have a reasonably good balance of minerals for decent extraction. I use the BWT Best Cup filters to take up the remaining slack.
 
Interesting. Sulphamic acid is available from Home Depot in the USA for cheap.

puly descaler.png
 
SouthernChap said:
That's one less thing you have to worry about. :)

I've got "moderately hard' water here in West Sussex. That's a downside as far a the requirement for regular (but not super frequent) descaling but an upside that the water does have a reasonably good balance of minerals for decent extraction. I use the BWT Best Cup filters to take up the remaining slack.
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Try London then! Water is H A R D. Have to descale our kettle BI-WEEKLY or we get a heavy buildup. Mind, that is mainly due to at multiple refills of a 1.7L kettle refilled at the 0.5L markerand on average 4 boils per refill. Yes, I drink a lot of tea. My average per day minimum is one (UK) Gallon* (8 pints, or 16 mugs) of tea..

* = 1 UK Gallon = 1.2 U.S. gallons, or 4.54 liters
 
GrifterGuru said:
Try London then! Water is H A R D. Have to descale our kettle BI-WEEKLY or we get a heavy buildup. Mind, that is mainly due to at multiple refills of a 1.7L kettle refilled at the 0.5L markerand on average 4 boils per refill. Yes, I drink a lot of tea. My average per day minimum is one (UK) Gallon* (8 pints, or 16 mugs) of tea..

* = 1 UK Gallon = 1.2 U.S. gallons, or 4.54 liters
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I grew up in Orpington so I know London water well. :grin: :foot in mouth:

When I moved back from Cheltenham (where I'd lived for 20 odd years) to look after my mum in the early 2010s, it was an unpleasant experience. :grin:
 
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