Archive for October 5th, 2009
Have you ever taken a shower in a house with hard water? No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to work up a satisfactory lather – shampoo just sits in your hair and rinses out. You end up exiting the bath with the creeping suspicion that you never really got clean. Hard water is the product of calcium deposits and other minerals blocking the pipes and changing the chemical properties of the water.
You might be less familiar with the effects of hard water in a beverage context. When consumed by itself, hard water can be difficult to detect. When used in making coffee or espresso, on the other hand, the difference is like night and day. Just as in the shower head and water pipes, calcium can build up inside coffee machine boilers – dramatically impacting the taste and consistency of the final product.
An espresso decalcifier takes care of the problem with ease. The substance simply needs to be run through the machine and – combined with a few rinses – it knocks the calcium right out. It’s worth noting that an espresso machine with heat exchanger style boilers is not intended to be decalcified. Consult the instructions on your machine, as automatic and superautomatic espresso makers have different requirements for decalcification.