Coffee is what gets us going in the morning and helps us stay alert as we accomplish all the day’s tasks – from work assignments to household chores. But if you consider your coffee maker your resident cheerleader, it might be easy to forget that there are some begrudged chores that go with maintaining it. In fact, coffee makers are one of the most difficult items in your kitchen to clean. Well, it may not be that they’re a special challenge. What’s more likely is that people neglect cleaning their coffee maker to a point where it eventually becomes quite a bothersome task.
But if you want to keep that coffee brewing fast so you can get out the door quickly, then you better take the time to clean your coffee maker. But how? It’s really pretty simple. However, it does take a decent investment of your time. For those on the run, who down four cups of coffee or more a day, time is precious. This is why it’s important to know how precisely to clean your coffee maker, so that one time’s a charm (at least for a while).
A Simple Step-by-Step Guide to Cleaning Your Coffee Maker
Okay, enough with the suspense. Here’s a step-by-step guide to cleaning your coffee maker. Keep in mind that each coffee maker is unique, so you might have to improvise a little bit. However, the basic technique shouldn’t change much.
If you use disposable coffee filters, go ahead and get rid of the used one. Now, grab your coffee pot (or check your “water reservoir”), and instead of filling it with water as usual, fill it about a fourth of the way with vinegar. Then, fill the rest with water.
Run the coffee maker as if you were brewing a regular pot of coffee. After the brewing cycle, switch off the coffee maker and let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes to cool. Repeat! That’s right, you’ll want to brew another round of vinegar and water and let the machine cool off for another 10 minutes.
After the second round, repeat the process again, but this time don’t add vinegar. Use plain water. Fill the water reservoir (or pot, which you then pour into the reservoir) to the top, run it through the coffee maker, and let it sit turned off for another 10 minutes (or preferably longer).
You can manually wash the coffee pot and filter basket in the sink with warm, soapy water. Depending on your dishwasher, you might even be able to stick the coffee pot (or carafe) in there for a spin.
Since you want your coffee to taste like coffee and not vinegar, make sure to rinse until there’s no sign of vinegar left! No one wants their morning coffee to have a hint of vinegar in it.
So, all you need is some vinegar, soap, and water, and about an hour to spare to get your coffee maker in good shape and ready to brew. But beyond that, how often should you go through this laborious, tedious process?
Drip coffee makers should be cleaned about once a month. This ensures that your coffee isn’t tainted by bad-tasting (and even unhealthy) hard water deposits and leftover oils. If you maintain your coffee maker consistently, you can keep your coffee tasting nice and flavorful, and it’ll make the next cleaning session easier. The less buildup, the fewer times you’ll need to rinse your coffee maker.
So, if you want to wake up to a nice, warm pot of brewed coffee every morning, you must ensure that coffee is coming from the purest place possible.
An important note: espresso machines are a whole other animal. They require much more intense cleaning! Still, some coffee makers can be more difficult to clean than others, depending on their type and design. You might want to look up how to clean other parts of different coffee makers, like the percolator and vacuum brewer.
One last piece of advice: if you’re getting ready to tackle the grime on your coffee maker for a good hour, why not brew a fresh cup of coffee first to get energized for this annoying chore?