The Ultimate Guide to Cleaning and Maintaining Your Home Coffee Machine
So, you’ve been bitten by the coffee bug! You have found the profile of coffees that you enjoy and started your at-home brewing journey by setting yourself up with some equipment. Or maybe you keep it simple and have used a basic drip coffee machine for years for a consistent cup of coffee at home. Either way, your home coffee equipment is an investment, and it will only produce consistently good-tasting coffee for years if you take care of it.
Coffee Machine Maintenance Tips for a Perfect Brew
All of your coffee machines will come with general maintenance guidelines, and you should do these things to care for your equipment — but we also have some additional recommendations for keeping your home brewing set up in tip-top shape. While cafés require stricter requirements for cleaning and maintaining equipment, many of your equipment's components can just be hand-washed with dish soap for residential maintenance. Essentially, you want to minimize coffee buildup to not deposit bitter and old coffee compounds into your fresh cup. You’ll also want to prevent oils, limescale, and other components from building up on the inside of your equipment to keep it operating optimally. Let’s dive into how to clean your coffee maker at home!
Maintenance for Drip Coffee Makers
The steps to caring for your drip coffee maker are simple and generally involve basic hygienic practices. Weekly/monthly (depending on how much coffee you brew in your pot), you should hand wash all removable components in warm, soapy water. These components will include the brew basket and mesh filter, water tank, hot coffee carafe, and lid. Use a warm, damp towel to wipe down internal components that cannot be removed—primarily the shower head and lid of the coffee brewer where residue can start to build up.Monthly, you can run a hot water cycle—don’t add any coffee to the basket, just fill the water reservoir and set it to brew. This will rinse any residue out of the internal components of the brewer.
Most manufacturers recommend descaling your brewer every 6 months, but this can depend on the hardness of the water where you live. If you are using tap water or live in a city with particularly hard water, descale your brewer every other month or so. You can use citric acid, or another residential descaler intended for your coffee machine, and most manufacturers will offer specific recommendations for this.
Maintenance for Coffee Grinders
If you have a burr grinder at home, you have made quite the investment, and you’ll want to take some regular steps to ensure it lasts a while. A lot of the buildup in our burr grinders starts in the exit chute. Make sure to brush the grinds out of this area daily to avoid clogging.
Some of the removable components of your grinder can simply be hand-washed. Monthly, you should hand wash the hopper and the cup that catches grinds with warm, soapy water.
Every 6-12 months, you can clean your burrs with grinder cleaning pellets. These are soft, food-safe pellets that are ground through the burrs and push out any residue, as well as absorbing any coffee oils that have built up. You can find these online and they will last you a long time.
Maintenance for Kettles
If you use a kettle for a pour-over each morning, these are extremely easy to clean and maintain. Most of what you need to avoid is limescale, and you can do so primarily by dumping excess water out after boiling and rinsing the kettle. This will deposit less limescale than if you leave your kettle full of water each day.
Unless you live in an area with very hard water, you can descale your kettle every 6 months or so. Do so by filling your kettle with one cup of white distilled vinegar and filling it up with water up to the max fill line. Bring your kettle to a boil, turn it off, and let it sit for one hour. Dump the mixture out of the kettle and rinse with water—that's all!
Maintenance for Home Espresso Machines
If you have invested in an espresso machine at home, this will involve a bit more care to ensure it’s running optimally and producing good-tasting coffee long-term. The first step in caring for your espresso machine is to make sure you don’t leave any coffee or milk residue sitting in the machine over time. After brewing coffee each day, purge the water from the group head to flush any residue out of the group head, and wash the portafilter and basket with warm soapy water.
Anytime you use the steam wand, you should purge it by pushing some steam out of the wand and wiping excess milk off with a clean towel. As long as this becomes a regular practice, not many additional steps will need to be taken with your steam wand. Once a month you can unscrew the tip of your steam wand and soak it in hot water to remove any residue.
If you use your espresso machine every day, you should remove the dispersion plate and screen from your group head each week to hand wash. When you do so, wipe down the inside of your group head and gasket with a warm and damp towel to remove any residue.
Monthly, you can soak the basket and metal pieces of the portafilter in an espresso machine cleaner if you have built-up residue. Along with this step, you will want to backflush your machine with espresso machine cleaner each month. Due to the pressure that is involved in brewing espresso, some liquid coffee will push its way into the pipes of the machine and can lead to residue over time. Use a solid basket and espresso machine cleaner and follow manufacturer instructions to run a cleaning cycle to backflush.
Depending on whether your machine is plumbed, or you have a water tank, you should plan to descale your coffee machine according to manufacturer instructions every 6 months. If you have a water tank, change out the water if it has been sitting for any amount of time, hand wash it, and fill it with fresh water.
Additional maintenance steps include hand washing the drip tray and grates once per month and changing out gaskets once per year.
