Decalcify?

dndrich

Coffee pals:

Love my Lelit Elizabeth. 2 ½ years in. Hoffman just did a video about maintenance and he seems to recommend a light decalcification every 6 months to 1 year. Now I know this is controversial, and may be so individual and machine specific. In my case I use lovely tap water with a hardness of about 150 that goes through the Lelit filters. It seems to come out with a hardness of 50. I change them every 6 months. I typically do like 10 shots a week. So, I often use citric acid to decalcify my Breville automatic dripper, and based on DaveC’s method in his Sway document I would consider doing it soon. Seems like such a mildly acidic mixture that it would be hard to imagine much harm, and some potential good here. Thoughts?

MediumRoastSteam

dndrich - remove the shower screen and dispersion plate. Does it have calcium marks? If it doesn’t, I’d leave it alone.

I personally opted for prevention, by removing all minerals from my water, and then reading potassium bicarbonate (or sodium bicarbonate). My machine looks the same, behaves the same and sounds the same as new.

dndrich

MediumRoastSteam It looks just fine. No calcium seen.

JHCCoffee

I use the 80mg potassium bicarbonate (baking soda) in 1 litres of ZeroWater. I make a concentrate of 8g in 1 litre, and then dilute the concentrate with ZeroWater. No scaling or pitting or corrosion risk. No need to water test, other than making sure your ZeroWater jug is producing 0 TDS water. No need to descale. No worries at all. Just make coffee. :)

MediumRoastSteam

JHCCoffee I use the 80mg potassium bicarbonate (baking soda) in 1 litres of ZeroWater.

Just a small observation: Baking Soda is Sodium (Na) Bicarbonate - not Potassium (K).

dndrich

I understand many use special water. I am not interested in that. My tap water is pretty good, and with the Lelit filter seems to be doing pretty well. I am just wondering how much trouble yearly low level decalcification would be with citric acid. Seems pretty easy to do.

Adrianmsmith

MediumRoastSteam

@JHCCoffee

Confucius did say

No, potassium bicarbonate—which is potassium acid carbonate—is not baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). However, potassium bicarbonate can be used as a low-sodium alternative to baking soda. Use the same amount of potassium bicarbonate as baking soda in recipes

Sorry 😋

I just use everpure claris ultra cartridge and dare not read the label!!