Hey guys Im a proud owner of Delonghi Magnifica S automatic espresso machine for 6 months now. Our water is super hard with loads of scale and I have been cleaning (descaling) machine with Delonghi EcoDecalc, but friend recommends this one (much cheaper):
Is this safe to use? It says it contains citric, lactic and malic acid. It also says to use 50 ml on 500 ml of water while Delonghi EcoDecalc should be 100 ml on 1700 ml (I think) of water. Its almost 2x difference and I was thinking if acids are simmilar I should use 100 ml of acid for full tank anyway.
We abuse our machine by making loads of coffe and tea. With scale settings on max we get descaling alarm every 3-4 weeks. It used to be on medium settings, but machine almost clogged completely once…so thats why max settings. Delonghi liquid is not cheap, but dont want to take any risk for 30€ a year. On the other hand, I dont want to pay 10€ for a 2-3€ product just because it says Delonghi on the bottle.
What do you use for your machine? How often do you descale?
Note that citric acid works a bit more nuanced than many other descalers: it acts as a chelating agent at high concentrations (2x the Ca2+ concentration) and is more effective at removing scale because of this effect, but at lower concentrations the effect might actually be reversed because it can form solid calcium citrate, which has a very low solubility in water.
If you are using citric acid based descaler you should make sure that you are always using enough of it to avoid the formation of calcium citrate.
Do you know roughly how much ‘enough’ is?
If you want to be super exact about it it would be roughly 4 times the mass of limescale + mass of already dissolved CaCO3 in your tap water (you can look that up if you know the hardness index of your water).
But really just don’t be stingy with citric acid and it will be fine is what i am saying.
Here is the math:
Spoiler
2 frac {210.14 g/mol } {100.0869 g/mol} approx 4.2
<math xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML” display=“block”> <semantics> <mrow> <mn>2</mn> <mrow> <mfrac> <mrow> <mn>210.14</mn> <mrow> <mi>g</mi> <mo stretchy=“false”>/</mo> <mi mathvariant=“italic”>mol</mi> </mrow> </mrow> <mrow> <mn>100.0869</mn> <mrow> <mi>g</mi> <mo stretchy=“false”>/</mo> <mi mathvariant=“italic”>mol</mi> </mrow> </mrow> </mfrac> <mo stretchy=“false”>≈</mo> <mn>4.2</mn> </mrow> </mrow> <annotation encoding=“StarMath 5.0”>2 frac {210.14 g/mol } {100.0869 g/mol} approx 4.2</annotation> </semantics> </math>
Thanks! Looks like our hardness is 42 PPM. I usually descale my machine whenever it pops the light on, but it doesn’t seem to build up much of anything.
Everyone else is saying vinegar, which will certainly work.
But if you’re like me and cannot stand the stench of vinegar, then I recommend citric acid. 2 tablespoons to a liter of water is a good place to start, but you can most likely find dosage specific to your machine with some googling.
Also, you can get ~2kg of citric acid for 15~25 $or€. I use it to descale everything from coffee contraptions, to shower heads; and a big bag of it lasts us 1½ years. Our water is fairly hard too, about 160 TDS.Just use vinegar.
Anytime you’re talking about scaling due to hard water, just use vinegar.
Even with a dishwasher, throw an upright bowl in there with some vinegar.
There might be some special products that work a teeny bit better, but they don’t cost a dollar for a gallon.
Dishwashers usually have a water softener integrated with a salt depot that you need to fill up on a regular basis. The water hardness needs to be configured accordingly.
I don’t think that’s an American thing.
In some areas of America we have giant water softeners, and it’s still not enough. But I’ve never heard of dishwashers having another built in.
Lots of people moving to reverse osmosis tho
You are correct, every dishwasher I saw in Europe has had a salt compartmebt for softening. None of the US ones I’ve come across have one. Those do on the other hand have a hot water inlet next to the cold inlet, which is kinda neat I guess.
The only dishwasher models I know of you can get in the US that have salt/softener dispensers are Miele models, and a couple of Bosch models. Both of which are of course European brands, and for Bosch it’s specifically only a couple of their “made in Germany” models and not the majority of their product line.
Also, start buying jugs of water for the thing.
Thank you for that. The easiest, and cheapest thing in the world to descale with.
Thank you all, i think ill start using citric acid or vinegar since I have them already. I was hoping its that simple, but still needed your answers. Cheers ☕
All you need is the acidity. Descaling happens by the acid neutralizing the alkaline scale, which is calcium based, and turning it into its salt form which is water soluble. Any acid will work. You just need enough molar quantity of it to react with however much scale is in your machine.
Citric acid works. Acetic acid (vinegar) works. Carbonic acid would probably work… Hydrochloric, sulfiric, or nitric acid would work too, but would be a monumentally bad idea.
Just use some vinegar or citric acid in water. There’s no need to pay more for fancy descaling products. I have a ~$6000 Miele coffee machine. It came with a few of its fancy cleaning and descaling tablets. When I ran out of those, I just started using bulk citric acid in the thing, bought in multi-pound quantity from the internet. Two pounds of the stuff is like 10 bucks, and will probably last you the rest of your life. For reference, my machine reports that it has dispensed about 8000 cups of coffee in its little report doohickey and the generic citric acid dissolved in water works just as well as the fancy Miele branded tablets that are $22 a pack.
Another approach:
Could you just use one of those brita pitchers that purify the water? (Just use it for your espresso maker)
https://www.brita.com/water-pitchers/
I think their filters contain water softeners.
Thx, the link is broken but I know what you mean. I never thought about that, but I was thinking about filtration system thut mounts under the sink. Would like to avoid aditional container if possible, but I should learn more about water filtration first. I have water filter in coffe machine. Not sure does it soften the water, but it doesnt help much. Is brita better for that purpose or should I use both?
Hmm, maybe you arent able to reach the site because of your country? At anyrate we used a water pitcher to fill our rocket espresso maker a cpl of times a week. I was thinking you could use the same thing except use one with a filter. Resin filters are supposed to soften water.
https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/reviews/best-water-filter-pitcher
Thx, the link is working fine now, dont know what happened
Will emphasize what’s already being said about food grade white vinegar. However, I’ll put a plug in for a Reverse osmosis system. No longer super expensive and filters last years. Pretty much eliminates scaling but more importantly you are going to get a better tasting brew. Excellent daily drinking water too.
All the expensive coffee machines say not to use RO water. Apparently RO water is slightly acidic and can damage the copper heating elements over time. I’ve a RO system and love the taste (really lack of any flavor), but stopped using it on my coffee machines.
Works great in my expensive Jura for past 10 years!
I’m pretty serious about water. I ph test it after filter changes (you can get decent ph meter for not too much) and if you are comparing to hard water which will be buffered by definition, yes will read as more acidic (but still well out of corrosive range) , but I imagine flushing high acid descalers through it periodically would be more stressful for the system than continuous RO water. The taste is so worth it alone. You will notice a difference. If you are really concerned you can do what I do for my RO drinking water. I add just a couple drops of minerals to it. I’ve checked the pH and this raises it and buffers it. Would still be way less gunky to the system than hard tap water.
RO water can get more acidic simply by absorbing co2 from the air. It really doesn’t actually matter, though, unless you are letting it sit open to the air for a while. Even if the pH does get low, it shouldn’t matter much cause the titratable acidity would be really low
