Citric acid as descaler Q

I use 4 or 5 heaped teaspoons for the kettle. Our water is pretty hard and this works, too cheap to worry much about.

(I do the teapot at the same time with washing soda.)

Cheers

how much citric for what? Seldom do I need to descale laundry :) If it's fo r an overnight machine descale, get it good & hot & let it sit there overni ght - and use as much as it takes to get it clean. That could be anything f rom a spoonful to half a cup in an extreme case.

NT

Official descaler for what?

I have a deLonghi coffee maker for which the official descaler is lactic acid, and I have seen a scientific explanation somewhere of why citric acid is bad for it. But I can't remember the details.

Citric acid is cheap and easy to find. Lactic acid less so, so there's more profit to be made selling it. That's all.

Cheers

Oust descaler is pretty cheap in ASDA, the MSDS says it's > 75% lactic acid, it's what I use in my coffee machine.

I don't know whether this is related, but I had two deLonghi espresso machines and both were destroyed by descaling, which caused severe leaks to appear. We used standard kettle descaler.

Seems they've re-formulated it to use citric, think I'm down to my last bottle ...

The "EcoCalk" that deLonghi sell

I wonder if lactic acid is somehow a byproduct of roasting coffee ? :)

I went to buy some large packs of citric in the chemist a few years ago. They limited me to one pack.

I think they thought I was going to use it to process/cut drugs.

Maybe the limescale was plugging the leaks.

that often happens. I'm leary of descaling kettles as a result.

NT

Citric acid ( use 2 teaspoons) should work well for scale in the teapot or kettle.

Washing soda is usually used for removing grease.

I use it for removing tea stains from a teapot.

As an alkali, it's useless to descale, and shouldn't be used in an aluminium teapot (or any appliance that may contain aluminium).

I'm surprised we are allowed to buy baking soda as it is used to make crack cocaine.

I think you are wrong, although I can't immediately find the link mentioning which material is more sensitive to citric than lactic. Sulphamic acid is widely used in industry (and by plumbers) but IIRC that's not recommended for DeLonghi either.

Just run the descale cycle. I put 2 tablespoons of citric acid into the reservoir, added water, and ran it as per instructions.

Light has gone off, and first cup of coffee was perfect.

Let's see next time ...

Possibly whats recommended by manufacturers is something that is "food safe" in case the customer doesn't thoroughly flush the descaling product from the appliance. More to do with arse covering than being the most effective.

Steradent is excellent for removing tannin deposits on the stainless steel bits of the Russell Hobbs "teasmaid" (and also on ceramic)