Citric acid to descale kettle?

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Lorraine B

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I've heard that citric acid is good to use to descale a kettle. Might seem a silly question, but how much? and how do you use it?

Thanks
Lorraine B
 
Pour enough white vinegar into it to cover the element (and wherever else needs descaling) and let it stand overnight/for 24 hours. Rinse again and again and again, before you make the next cuppa...
 
But you should boil the vinegar in the kettle to improve the action of the acid. When I descale the kettle I switch it one for about 10 seconds when it's empty and then I quickly quench the element with cold water, this will dislodge quite a lot of hard scale. Then follow this up with vinegar and your kettle will be as good as new!
 
Carpenter said:
But you should boil the vinegar in the kettle to improve the action of the acid. When I descale the kettle I switch it one for about 10 seconds when it's empty and then I quickly quench the element with cold water, this will dislodge quite a lot of hard scale. Then follow this up with vinegar and your kettle will be as good as new!
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Do you mean boil a kettle full of vinegar? I thought you just added some vinegar to a kettle full of water. That might explain why it never worked for me and I always ended up falling back on the ridiculously expensive descaler stuff from the supermarket.
 
Descaler is a waste of money, just add enough white vinegar to an empty kettle to cover the element. when you have descaled the kettle you'll nedd to rinse out a few times and do 1 or 2 boiles to get rid of the vinegar smell.
 
I think most commercial descalers are based on acetic acid (vinegar) or citric acid (lemons) any way.....venegar does the trick, as Carpenter says. Just make sure to give it a good wash out, venegar and coffee don't go to well together...:eek:
 
You can buy citric acid in any chemist. We use it on our kettle and it works a treat.

Paul24
 
We got a big tub of citric acid form the chemist to originally descale the bottle steriliser but it works a treat on kettles too. Just a teaspoon of the stuff we use.
 
Thanks guys, but back to the original question, do I just put in enough water to cover the element with a spoonful of citric acid and boil it up?
 
I usually fill up the kettle and add 2/3 tbsps of citric acid. Alternatively you could pop in 2 lemons cut in half and boil it up ... works a treat. You may need to repeat a few times if there is lots of scale.
 
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