Well, today my zinc ingot arrived. It cost only $11.08 shipped from Amazon.com and was a large piece that fit in the palm of my hand.



Since it's a less noble metal than aluminum (ignoble?), it cut fairly easily with a hacksaw. I first cut a groove,



Then an intersecting groove.



It took all of ten minutes to free this small wedge



that weighs 6.22 gm.



I then placed it in the aluminum alloy boiler of my Lady Duchessa,



and kept it away from the heating element.



Now I'll try it and see if it changes the taste of the espresso and will report back.

Tried it this morning for four shots after leaving the zinc in the boiler overnight. There was no "off" taste. Now it may take awhile to see if the zinc starts corroding while the boiler does not. 6 gm of prevention may be worth 25 lbs of cure.

There's a picture here in the Peppina Redux thread that shows a zinc band around the heating coil in a La Peppina as a sacrificial anode.

Mine came without this band.

Chris,

It's reassuring to see that the Peppina owner also used a relatively small bit of zinc. The Duchessa may be a corrosion resistant alloy according to Doug (orphanespresso), but he did treat the outside for aluminum corrosion. You can probably see by my photo that there's very little corrosion inside the boiler. I'll be interested to see if it develops or if the sacrificial anode corrodes instead.

BTW, my camera picked up "1960" engraved on the heating element, which may give an inception date to this mysterious machine.

I completly forgot but the newer pennies are made from Zinc and copper plated, you could probably just file off a bit of the copper to expose the zinc and have an instant anode

Well a pinch of baking soda with every liter does not sound that hard to do either as the above mention article stated.

Instead of zink - i recommend magnesium anode for aluminium boilers . Small pure aluminium anode i found on ebay uk verry cheap .

What is the advantage of magnesium over zinc?

I try to avoid using aluminum, after reading that guys post though, that is a bit re assuring that it's not as bad as I thought, although, I was considering getting a copper boiler machine and I'm worried about Cupric oxide build up on that now

Just felt I should chime in on the Aluminium/Alzheimer's discussion since I have some background on the topic.
There is, as far as I know, no solid evidence linking Aluminium exposure, or any other metal for that matter, to an increased risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). At best there is some weak epidemiological evidence, but experiments with animal models of AD have, to my knowledge, failed to establish any effect of Aluminium or Copper exposure on disease progression.

Now it is true that metals do accumulate in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, but in my view it is more likely a consequence of the disease, which is rather poorly understood. It is important to understand that AD seems to be a complex disease and there are likely many different factors influencing the risk of developing it.
Could aluminium exposure be one of them? It is possible, but I doubt that size of the effect is something to worry about. Either way, there is at least as strong epidemiological evidence that coffee reduces the risk of developing AD, so that should compensate

If you are still worried, start exercising, that should do more in terms of prevention.

*EDIT* DISCLAIMER: This is my personal opinion, should not be taken as medical advice and I could be just as horribly wrong as the next person.