Urnex

Nobody enjoys buying cleaning products, which is why this is the most-skipped purchase in home coffee and one of the most consequential.

Two problems accumulate in any machine. Coffee oils build up in the group and the basket, turn rancid, and drag every subsequent shot towards bitterness — plain water does not remove them. Limescale deposits on the heating element and through the pipework of any machine boiling hard water, slowly strangling flow and temperature stability until one day the machine stops.

Urnex makes the standard answer to both. Cafiza is the backflushing detergent used across the professional trade; Dezcal is a citric-acid descaler that works far faster than household vinegar and leaves no smell in the boiler afterwards.

Neither is exciting and neither is expensive. Between them they are the difference between a machine that lasts a decade and one that quietly gets worse for three years and then dies.