Best Coffee Pot Cleaner
Both diluted lemon juice and vinegar are effective coffee pot cleaners. If you’re looking for ready-to-use coffee equipment cleaning wipes, espresso equipment cleaners, and coffee equipment descalers, there are numerous commercial-grade coffee maker cleaning solutions available to you.
To uphold food safety standards, cafes must regularly clean their coffee shop equipment. Taking a few minutes to clean your coffee maker will improve the taste of your coffee. This is a simple way to improve your restaurant’s coffee service.
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How To Clean A Keurig Coffee Maker
Cleaning a Keurig is similar to cleaning a regular coffee maker. There are just a few extra parts you need to keep in mind.
After using the Keurig, immediately remove the empty pod and throw it out. At the end of the day, wipe down the coffee makers body with a damp, soapy cloth and then wipe it dry. Do not submerge your Keurig in water.
Slide out the drip tray and the drip-tray plate. Wipe those down with your damp cloth or sponge and dish soap. Rinse well and air-dry. You can wash these in the dishwasher instead.
Pop out the K-Cup pod holder and funnel, and then wash them with the sponge and dish soap, too. These are also dishwasher-safe, on the top rack.
Finish The Cycle And Flush With Water
Turn the coffee maker back on and allow it to complete the brewing cycle. Toss the paper filter, if there is one, and pour out the vinegar solution.
Now you can flush the vinegar scent and taste from the coffee maker. Fill the reservoir with fresh water, put a filter in the basket, turn the coffee maker on, and let it complete the brewing cycle. Remove the filter, pour out the water, and repeat with clean water for a second cycle. Wipe down your coffee maker and coffee pot with a clean cloth.
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Things To Know Before You Start
Angela Bell and Georgia Dixon, Grove Guides with Grove Collaborative, offer up a few safety warnings. It may seem obvious, but never submerge the entire appliance in your sink or dishwasher. You could irreversibly damage the coffee maker or injure yourself in the process. And always use care and watch out for broken glass when youre cleaning the glass carafe!
To prevent pathogens from accumulating in your coffee maker, practice good hygiene. Bell recommends emptying out water from the machines reservoir after every use, since standing water can attract bacteria and pests. Also, avoid leaving a coffee filter with wet grounds in the coffee makerthis is a recipe for moisture and mold.
How Long Will It Take To Clean
The day-to-day cleaning will take less than five minutes. Descaling your coffee makernecessary only a few times a yearwill take about half an hour to an hour, depending on the machine. However, most of that isnt active time. You can go about other tasks or relax while the cleaning brew cycle runs.
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Cleaning Your Auto Drip Coffee Maker: Step By Step
What you will need
- Some paper coffee filters
- Water
Step 1: Brew some vinegar
With an empty pot, coffee filter, and water reservoir, fill a pots worth of vinegar into your coffee makers reservoir, and start brewing as you normally would.
Once your coffee pot is full of hot vinegar, pour that down your drain.
Step 2: Brew some water
After you have poured the vinegar out, refill your reservoir with a pot-full of water.
Brew the water, pour it out, and then repeat one more time.
Step 3: Start brewing coffee again
Yep, thats it! Your coffee maker should now be delivering like it always did.
No more bitter coffeeat least for a month. Remember to clean your coffee maker next time and you will be making great-tasting coffee for years to come.
How To Clean Your Coffee Maker In 5 Easy Steps
Katherine Pittman is a décor and plant expert for MyDomaine. She has over five years experience working in the lifestyle, fashion, and beauty space. Previously, she was the executive assistant to the editor-in-chief of O, The Oprah Magazine. Her work appears in Byrdie, O, The Oprah Magazine, OprahMag.com, and other publications.
Madeline Tolle DESIGN: Mandy Cheng
There’s nothing quite like a nice, hot cup of coffee in the morning . But, after a few weeks of using your coffee maker, you might notice some calcium buildup or that the taste of your favorite brew isn’t quite like it used to be. Chances are you need to give your machine a nice clean.
Unlike French presses, pour overs, and percolators, cleaning your coffee maker is a little more involved than washing it in the sink with the rest of the dishes. And, unfortunately, a coffee maker can be one of the most bacteria-ridden things in your house. It’s hot and moist, which makes it a perfect place for germs and yeast to grow and thrive. And if you don’t clean it, those germs can get into your coffee. Calcium deposits from your water can also build up in your machine, making it difficult to brew a cup at all.
Here’s how to properly clean your drip or cup coffee maker in 5 easy steps.
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How To Clean A Coffee Maker
1. Wash removable parts with dish soap after every use.
“This is important because it helps remove coffee, grinds, and oil that are left behind,” says Forte. “You can hand wash at the sink with warm and soapy water, but usually the pieces are dishwasher-safe. And don’t forget to wipe down the outside and the warming plate where spills can burn on.” She also recommends leaving the reservoir’s lid open so it can dry out completely after each use!
2. Decalcify your machine every month with vinegar.
Over time, hard water minerals can build up in your machine’s inner workings, and you may notice that your coffee takes longer to drip. To get things back in tip-top shape, you need to cleanse and decalcify the machine. Forte’s trick: good ol’ reliable white vinegar.
Fill the reservoir with equal parts vinegar and water, and place a paper filter into the machine’s empty basket. Position the pot in place, and “brew” the solution halfway. Turn off the machine, and let it sit for 30 minutes. Then, turn the coffee maker back on, finish the brewing, and dump the full pot of vinegar and water. Rinse everything out by putting in a new paper filter and brewing a full pot of clean water. Repeat once.
3. Make your carafe sparkle again with rice.
You should always wash your carafe after each use, but if it’s looking dingy over time, fill it with warm, sudsy water, and a little rice. Swirl the mixture to loosen any gunk. Use a scrub sponge to remove debris and rinse well.
How Often Should A Coffee Machine Be Cleaned
The answer to the question of how often a coffee machine should be cleaned is frequently, but this isnt an onerous procedure, according to Nick Small, small appliances expert at AO . We recommend giving your machine a quick once over after every single use, wiping down the drip tray as well as the spout your coffee comes from, he says.
A regular full wipe down is always nice, too, in case of any splashes from coffee or food youve cooked in the kitchen, especially if it is placed near the hob.
Consider how much you use the machine, too. Different types of coffee machines have different cleaning intervals and requirements, however, they are almost always based on volume, explains Sertan Djelal.
For espresso, bean-to-cup and filter coffee machines which use either coffee grounds or beans and low to mid-usage of up to 10 cups a day, clean the brew group at least once a week to clear coffee grounds that can clog the machine. Left coffee also allows bacteria to grow in the machine. Spent coffee and water chambers should also be emptied/cleaned regularly.
For mid to high usage of 10 plus cups a day, ideally clean the brew group and chambers daily to remove coffee remnants.
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For Manual Or Drip Brewers:
For most drip and manual brewers, all you need to do at the end of the day is simply clean with some soap and water.
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Most coffee pots are difficult to clean because its not easy to put your hand in and scrub the inside. A bottle brush helps get to those tough spots and remove excess dirt and oil. I use the long brush any time I clean a coffee pot and make sure to put on a drying rack so theres no sitting water.
How Often Should You Clean Your Coffee Maker
If you want to keep your coffee maker working like new and producing the best-tasting coffee, make a habit of cleaning it on schedule.
Daily: Wash the removable parts after each use. To remove the oily coffee residue, use hot, soapy water. If you cant get your hand into the pot to scrub it, use a baby bottle brush.* Sprinkle salt or baking soda inside if you need added scrubbing power. Or, put them on the top rack of your dishwasher.
Monthly: To keep your coffee maker in the best condition, clean it monthly using one of these methods. Its best to do this on schedule, even if your machine has a light or button that reminds you to clean it. Those reminders are notorious for not working after a year or so, even though theres plenty of life left in the machine if you keep its pump free of mineral buildup.
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How Do I Clean My Coffee Maker Without Vinegar
Not everyone is interested in pouring vinegar into their coffee maker since maybe theyve had a poor experience with it in the past or might not believe it helps to disinfect as well as other products do.
Or, maybe you dont have vinegar at home, but you desperately want to enjoy a delicious coffee cup without a nasty aftertaste.
Below, you will find all of our favorite methods for answering, how do I clean my coffee maker without vinegar?
Lemon Method
However, the taste and smell of lemon might be far more appealing to you than vinegar, though youll still want to make sure you run a few freshwater cycles to help get rid of lemon residue.
Youll find that its far easier to get rid of the taste of lemon, which might mean you can save time by running one freshwater cycle rather than more than two.
Baking Soda
If youre not a fan of using ingredients with any taste at all, baking soda is another excellent alternative for getting rid of off-putting smells and flavors from the inside of your coffee machine.
For this task, you will want 1/4 cup of baking soda to one cup of warm water and stir the two ingredients until fully dissolved.
You can then pour the solution into the water reservoir and run a full brew cycle, finishing with one more period of hot fresh water to make sure there isnt any baking soda left behind.
CLR
To use CLR, you need to mix one part of the solution with eight parts water and then pour the cleaner into the reservoir of the coffee maker.
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Clean The Inside Of Your Coffee Maker Once A Month
Alaina DiGiacomo/Taste of Home
Minerals in your drinking water can build up in the machine, clogging tubes and making it hard to brew coffee. To avoid this, youll want to clean out the inside of the coffee maker once a month. Heres how:
If you dont want to use vinegar, you can make solutions with lemon juice or baking soda instead.
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Regular Maintenance Of Your Keurig Coffee Brewer
Keurig recommends regular descaling using their brand descaling solution about every 3 to 6 months.
We think every 3 to 6 months is a good interval between each descaling of your brewer, whether you use the Keurig brand solution or white vinegar.
Considering that every descaling is also cleaning and sanitizing the internal parts, no more than 6 months is probably best even if you are using very clean water.
You may want to coordinate changing your water filter in your brewer with descaling your brewer.
The external parts and reservoir really should be cleaned at least every 3 months, or as often as you wish.
Dont forget that there are 2 needles that puncture the K cup pods. Each can use regular checking and cleaning. Every 3 to 6 months is good for doing this.
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Fun Fact: Dirty Coffee Makers Can Actually Make You Sick
Because the compartments that hold grounds and water are poorly-ventilated. And because theyre hard to completely dry out, your coffee maker is the ideal place for mold to reproduce. Television news outlets in three major US cities swabbed 29 different machines and discovered more than half of them had bacteria counts in the millions. Meanwhile, another study reported that coffee reservoirs are one of the top 10 most germ-laden places in your home and 9% contained coliform bacteria .
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Dealing With Scale Inside Your Coffee Brewer
The other thing that builds up in your brewer is scale.
Scale is minerals the leech from your water and cling to parts of your coffee maker, inside and outside.
Scale is not toxic and does not need disinfected but it does need dealt with.
Descaling your coffee maker is another topic entirely which we have covered in detail in the post linked to below.
Again, scale is not toxic and any buildup should not change the taste of your coffee. But, the buildup does have a tendency to plug up the lines in your machine. This will cause the early demise of your Keurig brewer, which is why Keurig recommends frequent descaling.
Why take the chance on any of that and we want our brewers really really clean, right?
When you do descale your coffee maker, you are also working toward sanitizing and disinfecting it.
A first step in cleaning and sanitizing is to descale your brewer do this first.
Deep Cleaning And Descaling
Clean the inside of your coffee maker every 2-4 months using a deep cleaning and/or descaling solution. These solutions can be made at home or they can be purchased commercially. Deep cleaning removes the oily build-up and residue left behind by coffee grounds. Descaling removes the mineral build-up left behind in the coffee maker from hard water.
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How Do You Know Its Time To Descale A Coffee Maker
If your machine has a light indicator, then the light will turn on to let you know when the machine needs descaling. If you have an older machine or a model with less bells and whistles, it might not. You dont even need a light, though, because youll usually be able to see when its time there will be a chalky white residue. Or again, your coffee might start to taste a little off.
I have to descale my machine a few times a year. You may have to do it more or less, depending on your machine, how often you make coffee, and the hardness of your water.
Empty your coffee maker
Cleaning A French Press Coffee Maker
Some people prefer the simplicity of a manual French press, but its design can still hold some challenges when it comes to how to clean a coffee maker.
- Use a rubber spatula to scrape the spent coffee grounds out of the carafe of the French press.
- Alternately, you can fill the carafe with water and swirl to loosen the grounds, then pour the water out into a fine sieve. This prevents the grounds from falling down the drain.
- Discard the used grounds or save them for composting.
- Fill the carafe 3/4 of the way with warm water. Add a teaspoon of mild dish soap.
- Insert the plunger lid and use the press top to move the plunger up and down rapidly in the carafe three or four times.
- Empty the carafe and rinse it and the plunger well.
- Dry with paper towels or a clean kitchen towel.
- Reassemble the coffee maker.
- For deep cleaning, unscrew and disassemble the components of the plunger including the filter screens and disks.
- Wash all the pieces in warm water with mild dish soap you may need to lightly scrub the screens to remove old grounds.
- Rinse all the pieces well and allow to air dry.
- Reassemble the French press.
Consider composting old coffee groundsremoved from the French press.
Tip: Don’t wash spent grounds down the kitchen drain as this can contribute heavily to clogging the drain.
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How Do You Decalcify A Coffee Maker With Descaling Solution
If you want to use descaling solution rather than vinegar and water, then repeat the above steps, the only difference being that you’ll fill your coffee maker’s reservoir with descaling solution rather than vinegar and water. Both vinegar and descaling solutions work equally well when it comes to descaling, so it all depends on your personal preference.