When to Descale Your Espresso Machine (And How)

If you’re using an espresso machine in Adelaide, you’re going to deal with scale eventually. Our water isn’t as hard as Melbourne or Brisbane, but minerals still build up inside your boiler, group head, and lines over time. Left unchecked, it restricts flow, affects temperature, and can eventually cause real damage.

How Often Should You Descale?

For most home machines with Adelaide tap water, every 2–3 months is a good rule of thumb. If you’re using filtered water (you should be), you can push that to every 4–6 months. If you use bottled water with a specific mineral profile — you probably already know what you’re doing.

Signs you’re overdue:

• Machine takes noticeably longer to heat up
• Reduced flow from the group head
• Steam wand pressure has dropped
• You can see white buildup around the shower screen

What Descaler to Use

Use a proper espresso machine descaler — not vinegar. Vinegar leaves residual taste and isn’t as effective on the type of scale that builds in boilers. Cafetto Liquid Descaler or Durgol are both solid choices and readily available in Australia.

Basic Descaling Process

Every machine is slightly different, so check your manual. But the general process is:

1. Mix the descaler solution according to the bottle instructions
2. Fill the water tank with the solution
3. Run about a third through the group head
4. Let it sit for 15–20 minutes
5. Run the rest through
6. Run at least 2–3 full tanks of fresh water through to rinse

For machines with a steam boiler, you’ll want to run some through the steam wand as well.

When to Get a Professional Descale

If it’s been more than 6 months, or you’ve never descaled, it’s worth getting a proper service. Heavy scale can be tricky to remove completely, and I’ve seen DIY descaling go wrong when chunks of scale break free and block valves. That’s a job for the bench.

If your machine is feeling sluggish, get in touch and I’ll sort it out.