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Descale the boiler and circuit: Rancilio Silvia
Before you start
- Tools
- plastic spoon
- Supplies
- espresso machine descaler (descaling powder, or a citric-acid liquid descaler; dose per the product)
Warnings
- Stir the descaler with plastic only, never a metal or silver spoon. Source: Coffee Circle: How to descale your Rancilio Silvia espresso machine
Steps
- Start with the machine cold.
From the manual: “Ideally, you should only descale your machine when it is cold.”
- Add the descaling powder to a freshly filled tank and stir with a plastic spoon until it dissolves.
From the manual: “Put powder for the descaling process into the recently filled water tank.”
- Switch on and immediately run water through the group head, then through the steam wand.
From the manual: “Draw water from the brewing head immediately and afterwards through the water lance.”
- Stop once about a quarter of the tank has been used.
From the manual: “Draw enough water until ¼ of the tank is empty.”
- Switch the machine off at once and leave the descaler to work for 20 minutes.
From the manual: “Let it rest for 20 minutes and let the descaler do its job.”
- Switch on and draw another quarter tank through group and wand, then switch off and wait 20 minutes again.
From the manual: “Again, use up ¼ of your water tank.”
- Keep repeating those rounds until the tank is empty.
From the manual: “Repeat step 4 until the water tank is empty.”
- Rinse the tank thoroughly so no descaler is left, and refill it with fresh water.
From the manual: “Now flush the water tank properly to ensure no remnants of the descaler are left.”
- Run the whole tank of fresh water through, switching between the group head and the wand.
From the manual: “Rinse both the brewing head and the water lance alternately.”
- Do the fresh-water rinse one to three more times, until no descaler remains.
From the manual: “Repeat step 6 one to three times until you are sure no remnants of the descaler are left in the machine.”
Sources
Researched on .
Community: the maker’s text, hosted somewhere else, usually by a retailer.