Do you remember when you first got your coffee machine? It was shiny and clean and it brewed a perfect-tasting cup of coffee.

Now when you use it, it’s covered in scuffs and stains. There’s coffee gunk in all the crevasses, and the metal has gone from shiny to dull.

Every time you use your coffee machine, mineral deposits build up on the insides – clogging the pipework, and ruining the taste of your coffee.

You should be descaling your machine at least every 3 months, or 300 brews (whatever comes first!) to prolong the life of your expensive coffee machine, and to keep every brew tasting fresh.

In this article we'll explain what descaling is, why you need to do it, and what the best descaling product available on the market today is.

The Best Coffee Descaler In 2024 [Our Overall Winner]

The 3 Best coffee machine descaling products on the market today are;

• Best Overall: The Green Pods Eco Descaler

• Best Budget Option: Impresa Coffee Machine Descaler

• Best Liquid Descaler: DeLonghi Eco Decaulk

We tested 12 different popular descaling products and now only recommend using the Green Pods Eco Descaler. It comes with 4 sachets (1 year's supply) which are perfectly portioned - you just rip one open and pour it into your machine's water reservoir. It's environmentally friendly, and it's also more cost-effective than the big name-brand descalers like the ones from Nespresso or Keurig.

1. Best Overall: The Green Pods Eco Descaler

The Green Pods is a sustainable coffee company from New Zealand. Their Eco Descaler was an easy top pick for the best coffee machine descaler in our roundup and testing as it come in best for price, cleaning power and ease of use.

They sell on Amazon, and

Here's why we love it:
It comes with four sachets, which is enough for one year's supply. The sachets are perfectly portioned to make descaling easy. We love that it's environmentally friendly and more cost-effective than big-brand descalers. The Green Pods Eco Descaler is made from food-safe citric acid, which is safe to touch and won't taint the taste of your coffee. (It's also super effective at dissolving gunk and limescale build-up inside your coffee machine.)

Descaling Guides: The Green Pods go the extra mile here and include a QR code on the box. Scan this and you’ll find informative descaling guides for your exact model of coffee machine (pretty handy when you’ve lost the manual like I had!)

• Price: $19

• Type: Sachets (powder)

• Number of doses: 4 sachets / 4x 1litre/quart doses (1 year's supply)

• Sustainability: Environmentally friendly chemicals, compostable packaging, made from recycled cardboard.

• Country of Origin: New Zealand

BUY IT HERE

2. Best Budget Descaler: Impresa Coffee Machine Descaler

The Impresa Coffee Machine Descaler is a great option for those on a budget. It's an affordable descaling solution that's still effective at removing build-up and limescale from your coffee machine.

The Impresa Coffee Machine Descaler is made from food-safe citric acid, which is safe to touch and won't affect the taste of your coffee. It's easy to use and comes in a 16-ounce bottle, which is enough for 4 uses. The only issue is measuring out the right dose which can be tricky as it’s a liquid

• Price: ~$14

• Type: Liquid

• Number of doses: 16 oz bottle (4 uses total)

• Sustainability: Environmentally friendly chemicals however comes in throw-away plastic bottle

3. Best Descaling Solution:

4. BONUS Recommendation: The Green Pods Coffee Cleaner

While this is an article about descaling, it would be a miss to not mention coffee cleaning.

Most people don’t know the difference between coffee machine descalers and coffee machine cleaners (And that’s ok – it’s a bit confusing!)

• Descaling products are a special acidic formulation designed to dissolve limescale, which is a build up of calcium, magnesium and other minerals from your water supply.

• Coffee Cleaning Products are a food safe detergent designed to dissolve and remove fat and oil residue that is deposited by the coffee itself.

Note: we recommend cleaning every 1 – 2 weeks, depending on how often you use your coffee machine (café’s clean theirs every day!) and descaling every 2 – 3 months.

The Green Pods Coffee Cleaner is a optimally designed cleaning power that you dissolve in your machines reservoir (just like the descaler). It’s designed with the environment in mind so the recipe is food safe and won’t harm the planet or your family

• Price: ~$1 7

• Type: Powder

• Number of doses: 3 sachets (3 doses)

• Sustainability: Environmentally friendly chemicals, compostable packaging, made from recycled cardboard.

• Country of Origin: New Zealand

Why Do You Need To Descale?

A recent survey found that over 70% of coffee machine owners NEVER clean the inside of their machines. Cafés clean out their coffee machine after every shift, so surely it isn’t too much to ask to clean your home coffee machine at least once every few months?

That's where a descaling solution comes in.

By running the right cleaning chemicals through the pipework of your machine it gets rid of the buildup of minerals such as magnesium and calcium. These minerals accumulate in the interiors of the coffee maker, blocking the pipes, ruining the element, and tainting the coffee.

It also cleans out all the old coffee residue that’s built up over thousands of coffees (but more on that later)

Scale also has a negative impact on taste. A machine full of scale will cause the water to flow slower, and the temperature to be wrong – yielding a coffee either under or over-extracted.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to descale your coffee machine.

How Does Descaler Work?

Descaling solution removes the calcified build-up inside the pipework of the machine to ensure the machine doesn't die an early death.

Most descalers use a food safe acid to dissolve the limescale, where the salt (in this case calcium) is dissolved in the acid. Here, the free hydrogen ions from the acid will bond to the oxygen in the metal carbonate molecule – creating carbon dioxide, water, and dissolving the metal into a solution.

CaCO3(s) + 2H+(aq) → Ca2+(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l)

Scale is mostly Calcium (Ca) but will also likely contain Magnesium, Copper, Sodium, and Iron, based on what’s prevalent in your town’s water supply.

Typically, you’ll run your machine once using the descaling solution and then rise it twice with fresh water to flush out the descaler. The whole process takes around half an hour.

How Often Should You Descale Your Machine?

Most leading manufacturers recommend that you descale your machine every three months or 300 coffees – whichever comes first. That means if you use your machine frequently you may need to descale more often.

Some examples descaling frequencies are shown in the table below.

Some newer machines have a light that comes on when it’s time to descale. Read the manual and see if your coffee machine has this feature.

What Ingredients To Look For In A Good Descaling Solution?

Descaling solution is generally an acidic chemical that is capable of dissolving mineral salts such as oxides and carbonates. Notable descaling agents include acetic acid, citric acid and lactic acid. These are all food safe chemicals, however acetic acid does impart a more noticeable taste to the machine, thus lactic or citric is typically preferred.

• Lactic acid ??

• Citric acid ??

• Acetic acid ?

• Glycolic acid ?

• Formic acid ?

• Phosphoric acid ?

• Sulfamic acid ?

• Hydrochloric acid ?

NB: some of these acids, whilst great at dissolving gunk off your coffee machine, aren’t really safe to handle or ingest. We recommend looking for a descaler that contains citric or lactic acid as these are safe to touch, and won't taint the taste of your coffee.

Can you use vinegar instead of descaling solution?

Yes.. but no.

The key to correctly descaling is to use a solution that is acidic enough to dissolve the calcified deposits on the kettle, but soft enough not to damage any of the pipework or seals in the machine.

Scientifically speaking, cleaning your coffee machine with vinegar is almost exactly the same as with a commercial descaler solution.

Unfortunately, we’ve found vinegar tends to peel off the scale and build up in flakes which could clog your machine causing irreparable damage. We’ve heard of people having to throw out their coffee machine because of this and therefore recommend sticking with a product containing pure citric, lactic or acetic acid.

What About Buying ‘Eco-Friendly’ Descaling Products?

If you look for a descaler on Amazon, for instance, you’ll be overwhelmed with different products to choose from. Some bottles, some sachets, some in tablet form, and others are marketed as ‘eco-friendly’ alternatives.

Since the ingredients are often the same, the term 'Eco' usually points to how the product is packaged. For example;

? Nespresso's descaler comes in single-use plastic sachets which are not recyclable
? Keurig and Delognhi's descalers come in plastics bottles which are only slightly better.
??The Green Pods descaler (which we recommend) comes in recycled paper sachets and recycled cardboard box which is 100% compostable when you're done with it. Therefore there is zero waste!

What About Machine-Specific Descaling Products?

Let me be blunt. Machine specific descaling products are a hoax.

There’s no secret chemical that descales a Breville machine better than a Keurig machine, or is safe for Nespresso but not for DeLonghi machines.

This is just cunning marketing, and unfortunately the big brand names products are often more expensive than the others. In fact, there are a number of reasons we recommend NOT buying these products.

Nespresso’s Descaling Sachets

Nespresso sells small sachets of descaler alongside their machines at most appliance stores and online. Each sachet will have just enough solution for one descaling run.

They are sold in packs of two, are readily accessible at the Nespresso online store, Nespresso Boutique, and all Nespresso appliance retailers we check with.

• Number Of Doses – Each pack comes with two sachets, at one dose each.

• Price - At $5 per sachet this is rather expensive. You can buy identical products under a different brand name on amazon which yields a much cheaper price per dose.

• Sustainability –Unfortunately, the plastic sachets are not biodegradable, and since each sachet is only one dose, this is another single-use plastic-packed product. It’s a no from us

Keurig Descaler

Keurig coffee have their own product – the “Keurig Descaling Solution”. This solution comes premixed and ready to use.

We’re not a fan of this product for a couple of reasons.

• Dose size - We always recommend filling the entire water tank with solution to get the best clean. With this 14oz bottle you need to use the whole thing

• Price - At roughly $13 per bottle, and given that one bottle is only one dose, this is one of the more expensive products available.

• Sustainability - This product is a single use plastic bottle. You may be able to recycle the bottle defending on your city’s recycling program, but it still seems wasteful to us.

Our Take:
Expensive and unsustainable. There are far better options available. I think these manufactures trick people into buying the same brand name descaler as their machine (because that makes sense right) so once people realse you can use any descaler you can save a lot of money.

Is Descaling Solution Toxic?

The descaling products listed here are all non-tox and eco-friendly. They are made from lactic acid or citric acid which is food safe in moderate doses. Other descaling solutions may use caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide which is highly toxic, so please check the label if unsure.

NEVER use an industrial descaler or one from a hardware store as these do use chemicals that are harmful when ingested.

Final Thoughts And Recommendations:

So what do we make from all this? You can use any brand of descaling product in your coffee machine, as long as you dilute it with the correct amount of water to the manufacturer's instructions. You don't need to use the overpriced name-branded descalers

We recommend using the Green Pods Eco Descaler. It comes with 4 sachets (1 year's supply) which are perfectly portioned. It's environmentally friendly, and it's also more cost-effective than the name-brand Descalers.

You can grab it from Amazon here.

Disclaimer: The above is a sponsored post, the views expressed are those of the sponsor/author and do not represent the stand and views of Outlook Editorial.