Clean your coffee maker regularly to ensure the best quality. It's easy to forget about cleaning the inside of your coffee maker. However, a clean coffee maker is essential for the good taste of your coffee.
Rinse it at least once a month if you use it lightly and every other week if you use your coffee maker daily. Knowing how to clean a coffee maker is easy if you follow a few simple steps.
If you clean your coffee maker routinely, calcium sediments won't build up inside the unit. However, if you don't, you will notice hard components of calcium sediments accumulated around the inside.
A simple water solution and vinegar can be used for cleaning if you don't see calcium buildup. But if there already is a certain amount of buildup inside the coffee maker, you will need a good de-calcifying detergent to get the job done.
Use Water Filters to Avoid Calcium Build Up
Always use a water filter to avoid calcium buildup in your coffee maker. It filters a massive amount of contaminants from your drinking water, and once you have used filtered water, you never want to return to regular tap water. In addition, your coffee (and tea) tastes a million times better when using water filters!
Take out the Coffee Filter First!
First, you make sure there's no filter in the basket. If you have a permanent filter, you should put it into the dishwasher daily or at least a few times a week to keep it clean. Then you fill the water reservoir with water and vinegar. Usually, a couple of tablespoons of vinegar are enough to wash the coffee maker well.
Use Decalcifier or Water-vinegar Solution
Start your coffee maker and let the solution brew through the unit. Turn off your coffee machine when it's halfway finished with the pot. Leave it like this for at least 15 minutes, then turn it on again. This time let the remainder of the solution brew through until it has completed the brewing process and there is no more of the solution inside of the reservoir.
If you choose to use a decalcifier, follow the instructions provided on the detergent label.
Don't forget to clean with fresh water
Once the solution has run through the coffee maker entirely, you dump the coffee pot and fill it with fresh water. Next, fill the reservoir and run a whole pot of water through the coffee maker.
This allows for rinsing away all of the vinegar so you don't have any remnants making your cup of coffee taste truly awful. Some people like to brew a couple of pots of water to be sure they have all of the vinegar out of the unit.
If you are an avid coffee drinker, you know how fast calcium can build up in a coffee maker. Therefore, cleaning your coffee maker a minimum of once a month is essential. This is important because the taste of your coffee will make it evident the coffee maker needs cleaning if you wait too long.
Water filters can easily stretch the cleaning intervals to 6-8 months instead of monthly.