Descaling how often Breville Barista Express? - Page 2

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pcrussell50
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#11: Post by pcrussell50 »

Nunas wrote:If you are buying water anyway, I suggest buying distilled water and adding to it, as suggested by others. If you do a search here on water you'll find dozens of favourite recipes....
This ^^^

I use the filter I linked to for my plumbed machine (rotary pump BDB).

For my other machines with tanks that you have to fill, I buy distilled water and add half a gram of sodium or potassium bicarbonate per gallon of distilled water. That is the simplest "recipe" that is safe for all machines. And you will never develop scale. Ever. You can add more and more complexity from there, depending on your taste if you like.

-Peter
LMWDP #553

BaristaMan (original poster)
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#12: Post by BaristaMan (original poster) »

pcrussell50 wrote:In answer to the OP's question, I would advise to never descale. I do what La Marzocco recommends and what they do in high end espresso shops and feed my machine water that does not form scale. NOT distilled or RO though.

-Peter
Is bottled mineral water ok?
slipchuck wrote:The only ones I know of are through Breville


Randy
Yea the thing is they dont ship to my country

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BaristaMan (original poster)
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#13: Post by BaristaMan (original poster) »

Nunas wrote:Probably. Mineral waters are not all the same. The label should give the contents. Mineral water is not the same as distilled or RO water. If you are buying water anyway, I suggest buying distilled water and adding to it, as suggested by others. If you do a search here on water you'll find dozens of favourite recipes for suitable water. If you do not add too much hardness to the distilled water you'll never or only rarely need to descale. Your machine although technically a thermoblock is actually a thermocoil, as the water path through the block is stainless tubing. When you descale just be sure your chem is fine for stainless. Breville recommends vinegar...cheap, easy to get and it won't hurt stainless. The only down side to vinegar is it needs a bit more flushing than some other chemicals, to get rid of the vinegar taste.
Is Urnex Dezcal good for stainless?

BaristaMan (original poster)
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#14: Post by BaristaMan (original poster) »

pcrussell50 wrote:This ^^^

I use the filter I linked to for my plumbed machine (rotary pump BDB).

For my other machines with tanks that you have to fill, I buy distilled water and add half a gram of sodium or potassium bicarbonate per gallon of distilled water. That is the simplest "recipe" that is safe for all machines. And you will never develop scale. Ever. You can add more and more complexity from there, depending on your taste if you like.

-Peter
Ive never seen distilled water in my grocery store.
I guess I will stick with bottled mineral water and water filters?

pcrussell50
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#15: Post by pcrussell50 replying to BaristaMan »

How about De ionized water. Or De mineralized water? Those will be perfectly adequate substitutes for distilled water. I'm quite sure a country like Israel will have what you are looking for.

-Peter
LMWDP #553

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sweaner
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#16: Post by sweaner »

The simplest water formula is 400 mg of potassium bicarbonate added to 1 US gallon of either distilled water or Reverse Osmosis water. That is what I am using.
Scott
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pcrussell50
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#17: Post by pcrussell50 »

sweaner wrote:The simplest water formula is 400 mg of potassium bicarbonate added to 1 US gallon of either distilled water or Reverse Osmosis water. That is what I am using.

Yes, this. ^^^

As roughly stated at the top of this page above:
For my other machines with tanks that you have to fill, I buy distilled water and add half a gram of sodium or potassium bicarbonate per gallon of distilled water. That is the simplest "recipe" that is safe for all machines. And you will never develop scale. Ever. You can add more and more complexity from there, depending on your taste if you like.

-Peter
;)

-Peter
LMWDP #553

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Nunas
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#18: Post by Nunas »

Ive never seen distilled water in my grocery store. I guess I will stick with bottled mineral water and water filters?
You can probably get a reverse osmosis under-sink unit to make your own RO water if you don't have any distilled or RO water available. Over here, grocery stores often have a big machine that dispenses RO water into jugs. Use this and follow the recipe provided by the others who commented. As for "mineral water" you need to be cautious, as I mentioned before. That term can mean nearly anything. It's the some of the minerals in water that cause scaling. Normal filtering will not do the trick.

Other alternatives are ion exchanger bags and ion exchanger cartridges usually available from espresso machine sellers in hard water areas and online. Some need to be recharged periodically with salt and some are just replaced. Some reservoir machines come with them. Another option if your water is not too hard is a Brita jug. I've tested them and was astounded to discover that they will lower the TDS considerably; however I don't know what they do with the specific hardness minerals, if anything. I'm not a fan of Zero Water jugs, but they remove nearly everything from water. You could try one of these and experiment with adding back some bicarb. I don't care for them as eventually the water begins to have an off taste...no idea why. When they're new they work very well.

BaristaMan (original poster)
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#19: Post by BaristaMan (original poster) »

pcrussell50 wrote:How about De ionized water. Or De mineralized water? Those will be perfectly adequate substitutes for distilled water. I'm quite sure a country like Israel will have what you are looking for.

-Peter
But on the manual it says to never use water without minerals

pcrussell50
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#20: Post by pcrussell50 replying to BaristaMan »

You add minerals to that, mate. Just not scaling minerals. There have been at least three posts in this thread pointing this out. This way you have the minerals required for proper operation but NOT the ones that cause scale.

-Peter
LMWDP #553

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