Whether you love them or whether you hate them, coffee makers or Keurig has certainly made our lives a lot easier. Just imagine waking and being greeted with the aroma of freshly made coffee. Life doesn’t get better than these. However, as efficient as they are, coffee makers can be a bit moody and throw in some tantrums while making coffee. Why do you ask? Because they need cleaning, of course.
Are you someone who hasn’t cleaned their Keurig in some time? Well, you ought to do that soon then. Just like the laundry and the utensils of your household, your Keurig also needs a bit of a maintenance and cleaning now and then. And it is extremely important that you maintain your Keurig to ensure its good function.
Don’t want to let anything happen to your early morning lifeline right?
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Coffee fun facts
- Americans drink 300 million cups of coffee every day.
- 75% cups of coffee out of the 300 million cups are brewed at home
- Approx 42 coffee beans are required to make one normal cup of espresso
- In 1683, one pound of coffee price was as immense as 4 acres of land in New York
- Turkish bridegrooms were once asked to vow on the wedding that they will serve coffee to their wives, failing to which the bride can end in divorce
Why Does A Coffee Maker Need Cleaning?
Gone are the days of the single serve coffee machines, no matter how convenient they were. The era has changed, and there are the new coffee makers with new models. They sure made life easier for us, but they have a certain drawback of retaining water in the storage for a long time. This leads to different deposits of minerals and molds on the coffee maker. Here are some signs when you just know that your coffee maker isn’t doing well.
- When it takes forever to brew a single cup of coffee.
- When the brewer just messes up your drink by giving you only half a cup when you wanted a full one.
- The weird smell of the coffee is just a sign that you need to clean that up.
- When you see a large build-up of minerals on different parts of the machine.
Mineral deposits that occur due to the build-up of hard water are considered to be one of the main reasons why the coffee makers mess up in the first place. So is there a solution to all of this. Well, sure there is. There are a few things that you can do to make sure that your coffee brewer is all cleaned up.
Cleaning The Outside
You need to make sure first that there is no water inside the storage. The next thing that you need to do is to clean and wash the removable components from the maker with the help of soapy, warm water. There are many models whose components are dishwasher safe. Dissemble and clean the milk steamer attachment too if there is any present.
The next thing that you gotta do with your partially disassembled coffee maker is clean with the help of vinegar. Take a small brush and dip it in the vinegar. Clean the surroundings and the base of the maker around the reservoir and also make sure that you cover the areas of the cup/pod.
Then there are the reusable filters in the machines that need scrubbing now and then. So make sure that you don’t miss those. You all know that the grounds can get all congested into the mesh. So it is important that you use a bit of vinegar to clean out the grounds of coffee from the mesh to make sure that it’s clean. Once you are done cleaning the outside of the coffee maker, you can go ahead and reassemble all the parts together again.
Cleaning The Inside
There is no denying the fact that the inside of a Keurig is as important as the outside. So when it comes to cleaning, the inside of the Keurig should be given the same importance as the outside of the Keurig.
When you are dome reassembling your Keurig reservoir, fill it up with some water and white vinegar.
Give your Keurig a few turns without the filter, brewing vinegar in each turn. After you have a few cups of vinegar brewed, let the vinegar solution just sit on the machine for some time, probably a few hours. Then repeat the cycle again. Make sure the vinegar solution has been all used in the procedure.
Did all that? Now remove the reservoir and clean it and fill it again with water. Give the machine a few more turns and brew cups of hot water to clean out the remaining vinegar solution. And done! Your Keurig is all cleaned up.
So there you have it. We hope that these steps will be helpful in cleaning your Keurig efficiently.