put 15g per litre citric acid - can't get it easily in liverpool as its used to cut heroin by drug dealers but one of the china town shops had it in the end.
Ran it through with the fill sensor removed so steam wand was spitting water out. Also ran the hot water tap and both groups until i could taste citric acid in the ater then left it for 2 hours with the heating element on. I wasnt sure because I had set it to overfill whether there was the potential for the boiler to blow (but i had replaced the overfill sensor at this point, but wanted to run it hot as several websites had suggested getting a faster descale at temperature.
After this and flushing 12 litres of filtered water (mains brita filter) through it the hot water tap stopped looking green and citric acid taste not discernible.
Questions for you all
1) both tea from the hot tap and coffee from the group heads taste completely different even though the water appears to be normal - is this typical and will it settle back to normal? The coffee appears to have lost its chocolately edge and appears quite tart This link
http://www.home-barista.com/espresso-ma ... t6355.html suggests that the previous scale has acted like an insulator and perhaps theres a a taste difference due to temperature gradient?
2) This is the first descale i have done on this machine which has been switched on every day for 3 years. Our area has very little mineral content so i wasn't expecting masses of build up. The taste of the coffee has always been good so i don't know if this is just residual citric acid taste.
3) Should i do a quick temperature test to see if there is any major difference - one thing i have noticed is that the heating element comes on and off very quickly now compared to before.
Many thanks