Kester wrote:
I went the citric acid way and descaled both my Quaha coffee machines. ........... I kept the machines turned on and the boilers heated overnight. The next day, I was flushing the machines with tap water. After the first liter flush, the water coming out of the machine tasted foul. It took me more than 3 liters of water for each machine to rid the foul taste....
Hello Kester. When running a descale "cycle", do not leave the boiler switched on ie descale cold. The way I do it, is to switch on the machine only for long enough to pump the descaling solution through the boiler and out the group. Then SWITCH OFF for the period of time that you leave it in there "soaking", then switch back on when you want to run the next lot of solution through, and switch OFF again etc until you are finished pumping the solution through. Same for when you subsequently run clean water through to flush out the remainder of the descaling solution. IE....dont descale hot, and that may be why you had to run a lot of water through later to get rid of the foul taste. Simple domestic machines used in places with relatively good water, are not really going to be affected long term by scale ie, unlikely to get blocked up over long periods. So as others have said, why bother with the "preventative" descale. If you are in an area known for very hard water, by all means descale your domestic machine OR, be proactive and take preventive action with an appropriate water conditioning "filter" (and then dont need to descale), because if the water is too hard for the coffee machine, it is also too hard for the kettle and everything else in your home that you use water with including for showering, laundry, cooking, washing the cars, and drinking. Anyone that has a more expensive more technical semi commercial machine, should be doing that anyways. Hope that helps. PS I guess if you had bought a proprietary descaler instead of a chemical, the instructions for descaling (or the instructions for descaling in the machine's handbook) would have mentioned not to allow the machine to heat up during the process.
