How to Clean a Coffee Maker With Vinegar

Today we’re going to talk about how to clean a coffee maker with vinegar so you don’t have to spend money on unnecessary cleaners or toxic chemicals.

Here’s how to clean coffee maker with vinegar

It only takes a few easy steps to rid your coffee maker of nasty little microbes (which we’ll tell you about in a bit), to make sure none of them end up in your cup of joe:

1. Dissemble your coffee maker’s individual parts.

2. Wash the parts with natural dish soap that doesn’t contain any harsh chemicals (learn more here). This step will help to clean off coffee residue and remove some of the unsanitary germs.

3. Now its time to prepare your vinegar solution. Take a half cup of water and mix it with a half cup of all-natural vinegar (like this one).

4. Pour the mixture into the coffee maker’s water chamber and start a brew cycle.

5. As soon as the vinegar solution begins to trickle into the coffee pot, stop the cycle and let the mixture sit inside the coffee maker for 30 minutes.

6. Re-start the cycle and discard the vinegar mix.

7. Run a second cycle with clean water to remove any vinegar odor.

And that’s how you clean a coffee maker with vinegar!

Now that you’ve mastered the front end, let’s take a deeper look at why cleaning your coffee maker is so important, and why you should clean it with vinegar (rather than a commercial cleaner).

Why clean a coffee maker?

As it happens, coffee makers are breeding grounds for bacteria colonies.

How do we know this?

A group of journalists was wondering about the cleanliness of their coffee makers and decided to conduct a study.

They sent some of their viewers’ coffee makers and the coffee makers in their news room to a group of scientists to find out what’s really inside their coffee.

When the lab results got returned they were surprised to learn that some of the coffee makers bore close to 5 million bacteria colonies.

In addition to the moist environment, another reasons why bacteria spread so quickly inside coffee makers is that caffeine has an invigorating effect on bacteria.

According to a study conducted at Oregon State University, caffeine provides bacteria with such an energy boost that adding coffee grounds to your compost bin significantly speeds up the process of turning organic matter in to compost.

This means that the coffee residue inside your coffee maker also energizes the bacteria, allowing them to spread fast and end up in your hot jolt of java.

That’s why many folks clean their coffee makers on a regular basis. What’s so special about vinegar, though, that makes it great for cleaning coffee makers?

Let’s find out.

Can vinegar really clean coffee makers?

Vinegar can kill harmful germs when used for a sufficient amount of time and at a high enough concentration.

A team of researchers tested the cleaning power of vinegar, and found that it was effective at killing E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus.

A separate study found that vinegar kills 98.6% of all microbes inside kitchen sponges, which are by far the most bacteria-laden item in most people’s homes.

A third study revealed that vinegar is so effective at cleaning that it even kills the kind of bacteria that cause tuberculosis. Exposing surfaces to apple cider vinegar for 30 minutes was sufficient to eliminate the pathogens.

Furthermore, vinegar’s high acidity helps it to loosen grime and reduce stains.

Those findings show that there’s no need to use toxic cleaners like bleach to clean your coffee maker. Vinegar has great cleaning capabilities all by itself, and is an effective way to keep germs at bay.

Keeping your coffee maker clean

Big kudos to you for cleaning your coffee maker! Most people never make it that far.

The next goal is to clean your coffee maker on a regular basis.

Keeping your coffee maker clean and sanitary actually isn’t as hard as it might sound. Here is a routine you can incorporate into the dish-washing part of your day (after you’re finished using your coffee maker for the day):

1. Disassemble the individual parts and wash them with natural dish soap. That’ll help you achieve two things. First, you’ll wash off any stuck coffee and grounds before microbes can feed on them to grow their colonies. Second, natural dish soap doesn’t include any harsh ingredients that can migrate into your cup of coffee.

Watch the video:

Learn more here.

2. Allow the parts to air dry. This saves you some time and effort, and prevents your clean coffee maker from getting contaminated by the microbes that love to hang out in kitchen towels. (You can read more a the science of air-drying dishes in this post).

Regularly repeat the steps in this post.

Feel free to bookmark this page so you can refresh your memory quickly if you ever forget how to clean a coffee maker with vinegar.

After all, nothing heightens the feeling of enjoying a delicious morning brew quite like the knowledge that it was prepared in clean equipment.

That's how to clean a coffee maker with vinegar!

As we’ve seen, vinegar has great cleaning properties. Those same properties make it a great choice for cleaning other things in your home without having to worry about leaving a trace of harmful chemicals behind.

If you want to learn more about cleaning with vinegar, you can read our post about how to sanitize dishes with vinegar, how to clean a wooden cutting board without toxins, and why you should clean your shower head regularly.

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