Name says it all. I haven't found citric acid locally to descale my m30, but I did find Puro.

Can I use this to clean out my machine?

If so, how do I get it into the machine? Do I dilute the Puro and use the pump to get it in?

Thanks for the help and advice,
Craig

No! Puro Espresso Cleaner is for dissolving old and rancid coffee oils that coat your baskets, portafilters and brewheads. With regard to the latter, a small amount of the cleaner is put into a blind filter basket and you go through a backflush procedure. If you suck Puro into your boiler or internal lines, you will damage your machine. Puro is not a descaler. It is a detergent.

For descaling, commercial products such as Dezcal or Everpure Scale Kleen are used by many, if you can't find citric acid. These are citric acid based, but have one or two other components as well.

There are a ton of subjects on this board, some quite recent and quite good, which detail procedures for descaling espresso machines. Use the SEARCH function at the top of this page and you will find lots and lots of material to read.

Citric acid is sold at wine and beer-making supply stores. You can order it from a drug store, but this is usually an expensive route.

Citric acid is also sold at most grocery stores as "sour salt". According to their search, it's even available at Walmart as Ball Citric Acid Additive (for canning).

Wow great information.

I tried searching here and around the web for Puro as a descaler but nothing conclusive came up. Thanks for the knowledge.

Also thanks for the citric acid finds. Turns out I have a brew shop about a mile away with citric aid for 8$ a pound.

I got mixed results in my search about using Puro on my Silvia. Is Puro ok to use on that?

Thanks,
Craig

Puro is ok to use on your Cimbali or Silvia as a backflush (detergent) cleaner. You may also soak screens, baskets and the metal part (not the plastic handle) in it to remove rancid oils. It will not remove any scale, only dried-on oils.

PURO is not a descaler, and if used as such will probably ruin your machine.
For descaling, use only the citric acid, Dezcal or Everpure Scale Kleen or similar descaler to descale your espresso machine (if it needs it).

There are plenty of topics on HB which provide descaling instructions for a wide variety of machines. Just search on 'descaling silvia' or 'descaling cimbali', etc. I'm sure they will get you pointed in the right direction.

There are different schools of thought regarding descaling. Some believe it causes more problems than it solves. If you have an old machine that is heavily scaled you will probably need to disassemble your machine and soak components in hot concentrated citric acid. You should find that searching the forums here, too.

Hope that helps and that I'm not harping too much - just would hate to see a bad mistake made because I did not make myself clear enough. Regards and good luck.