Ok, maybe not this exact second, but when was the last time you cleaned your coffee maker? Last month? Last year? Or never like me?
Limescale, mineral deposits and leftover coffee oils build up in coffee makers, corrupting the way our morning brew tastes. Cleaning a coffee maker is easy to do and you’ll notice an improved taste in your very next cup of coffee.
There’s many ways to clean a coffee maker, I used white vinegar because it was cheap, effective and I had a bottle of it sitting in my cupboard.
- Start by filling your coffee pot with one third vinegar and two thirds cold water.
- Put a filter in your coffee maker.
- Pour the water and vinegar into your coffee maker. Turn it on and let it go threw your normal brewing cycle. If you can, open up your windows. My whole house filled with vinegar aroma.
- After it’s done, throw out the filter. I couldn’t believe how much sediments and minerals were caught in the filter.
- Let the coffee maker sit and cool for 10-15 minutes.
- Rinse the coffee pot.
- If it was like my coffee maker and still needs more cleaning, repeat the steps again.
- Once your done with the vinegar, repeat the process twice more with just cold water to get rid any remaining odor. If it still smells like vinegar, you can run cool water through it as many time as you need.
Depending on the quality of your water, you should clean your coffee maker anywhere from once a week to once a month for the best tasting coffee.
If you don’t want to use vinegar, there are several other alternatives.
- You can use two denture cleaning tablets, just make sure they dissolve before you put them into the coffee maker.
- Use citric acid mixed with four cups of hot water and four cups of cold water.
- There’s coffee maker cleaning solutions that you can buy.
One thing that you shouldn’t use, is soap to clean your coffee pot. You also shouldn’t put it in the dishwasher. The soap attaches to the oils deposited by the coffee and can leave the taste behind.
To clean your coffee pot, use ice cubes with a little bit of water. Swirl the ice and water around your coffee pot. If you have some really tough stains, try adding table salt. Just using ice and water wasn’t good enough to get all of the stains out of my coffee pot, but the salt worked.
Another thing to try, is putting a glass marble in the water chamber. It attracts mineral deposits in harder water and then you only have to wash the marble once a week, instead of the whole coffee maker.
One warning: This isn’t a quick process. It took me over an hour to clean my coffee maker so if you’re in need of caffeine make the coffee now and clean the coffee maker later.
Do you have any tips, tricks or methods that you use to clean your coffee maker?
Just for the record, the coffee makerd picture above, wasn’t mine.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You’ll find that if you keep up with it once a week or so, it won’t take anywhere near as long. This is probably the single best thing you can do to improve the flavor of your coffee. Amazing what a difference a clean coffee maker makes!
One place that gets overlooked a lot is the showerhead where the water gets sprayed over the coffee grounds. Just attack it with a soft toothbrush when you clean your coffee maker to get the remains of the coffee oils.
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uhhhh…..my coffee pot is really gross right now. Thanks for the reminder.
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Yet another testament to the superiority of the French Press. Every week or two I full dismantle the assembly and hand wash it. Doesn’t take much time or effort and certainly doesn’t warrant a blog post of instructions
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Chameleon – I’m going to try cleaning the shower head next time. I’m really amazed by how much the difference a clean coffee maker makes.
Rose – Trust me, I understand.
Allen – I swear one of these days, I’m going to get a French Press. Soon, I promise.
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