Steps In Cleaning Coffee Makers Using Vinegar

Over time, coffee residues, hard water deposits, as well as other elements will accumulate in your coffee maker. These impurities will greatly affect the taste of your brewed coffee. Good thing, cleaning a coffee maker is actually not a rocket science. You can find a number of ways to make this task way easy for you. But if you think rinsing this machine with soapy water will do, you’re wrong. If you really want to extend the service life of your coffee maker, you need to provide it with thorough cleaning on a regular basis.

Since it is natural and it doesn’t have any toxic residues, vinegar is one of the best coffee maker cleaners you can use. This solution also has acidic properties that can help eliminate mineral accumulations, lime scale, and oil leftovers produced by brewing different beans. These elements must not be ignored because it won’t only cause breakage or wearing out of the coffee maker, it will also taint the taste of every cup of coffee you brew. It is, hence, significant that you do clean it the right way.

Here are some steps in cleaning a coffee maker without using any chemicals or any complicated procedures:

1. Immerse or wash your coffee pot in vinegar.
As you do this process, you can provide the outside portion and the base of the coffee maker with aesthetic touches at the same time. You can also perform this step using vinegar.

2. Pour vinegar in the coffee pot and turn the coffee maker on.
You can also choose to put a filter in the coffee pot, in case you haven’t cleaned it before. Run the coffee machine and let the vinegar and hot water do the cleaning. The hot water and acids in the vinegar will sure break down or remove stains and mineral buildups in the pot that may cause clogging in your coffee maker.

3. Take out the coffee filter and rinse it well.
If yours is a mesh filter, you will see a whole bunch of dirt coming from the machine. Those are exactly the elements you want to get rid of. Usually, these are old coffee beans, oils, residue, and minerals that have been accumulated due to recurring evaporation of non-deionized water.

4. Take out the coffee pot and dispense the remaining vinegar.
After cleaning the filter, rinse your coffee pot thoroughly to eliminate all the residues.

5. Do the above mentioned steps one more time.
Since vinegar acts on the lime and accumulated minerals through chemical reaction, it is more likely that all of the grime and dirt have been eliminated without scrubbing the machine. So better perform these steps more than twice to make sure your coffee maker is really clean before using it again. To do away with all the vinegar, wash your coffee pot and filter with pure, deionized water.

While you can use commercial products for cleaning coffee makers, they aren’t that practical especially if you’re on a tight budget. After all, buying these products does mean paying for acids. So why not use vinegar instead?