I’ve had my Mechanika Max for around 6 months now, used around 3 coffees a day using Ashbeck water. I feel it’s time for a descale as there’s a little scale around the mushroom valve and hot water arm. I’ve got citric acid powder but not sure on quantity to use or best practices. Any advice would be helpful.

    5 days later

    Sorry but I don’t have knowledge of the ratios of powder to water. Nor of descaling for your machine. I just never have had need to descale as I use the RPavlis water recipe in my Decent and prior Lelit Elizabeth.

    coffeelover - I don’t think Ashbeck will scale up that fast - although, saying that, the composition has changed in the recent years so it might be a totally different thing from what I was used to back in the day.

    As @JHCCoffee - best thing to do is to avoid scale all together, and one of the most effective ways is with a ZeroWater jug remineralised with 100mg/L of sodium bicarbonate or potassium bicarbonate.

    With water at 180/200ppm, two coffees a day, my ZeroWater filter lasts me about 10 months.

        MediumRoastSteam I don’t think Ashbeck will scale up that fast - although, saying that, the composition has changed in the recent years so it might be a totally different thing from what I was used to back in the day.

        Yes I head that. Maybe I’ll look into a BWT filter or something similar.

        MediumRoastSteam best thing to do is to avoid scale all together, and one of the most effective ways is with a ZeroWater jug remineralised with 100mg/L of sodium bicarbonate or potassium bicarbonate.

        With water at 180/200ppm, two coffees a day, my ZeroWater filter lasts me about 10 months.

        Yeah another good option but my thinking was not a hard descale just a light ish one to keep on top of things. I feel if left too long or not bothered to do I’ll have to strip the machine down for a major descale in the future which I dont want to do.

            MediumRoastSteam As @JHCCoffee - best thing to do is to avoid scale all together, and one of the most effective ways is with a ZeroWater jug remineralised with 100mg/L of sodium bicarbonate or potassium bicarbonate

            So make a concentrate of 10g baking soda in 1 liter of water and keep that on hand. Then dilute 40 ml in a 4 liter jug of Zero water.

                JHCCoffee - isn’t the metric system wonderful… 😉

                Personally, I keep a very small amount (relatively speaking) of concentrate ready. So for me, I have a small bottle where I dilute 1.5g of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) with 150ml (150g) of water. That lasts me approx. 2 months!

                My ZeroWater jug usually has 700ml of water ready. Using a syringe put 7ml of the concentrate into the tank, and then dump the 700ml of water of the ZeroWater into the tank. Of course, adjust the ratios accordingly depending on how much water you are using.