I’m hotter than fish grease about this. I feel I’ve been lied to, sabotaged, deceived and tossed under the bus. We have a couple of urns, with plastic drip dispensers on them at work, made by Bunn. The water is piped in. We put coffee in the basket, flip the switch, and it fills a couple of square urns. We flip the plastic dispenser switch, and serve coffee. We mess with nothing above the basket, it is all leased. The urns we are to maintain. I worked here for a couple of months before anyone asked me to clean the urns. Before that, they were just used day after day, without as much as a rinse. After I was asked to clean them, I thought I spotted rust in the spout. I was assured it was only coffee stain, and was told to soak them overnight with vinegar. I’m a big fan of vinegar, but it didn’t have much of an impact. So I used a lime eliminator other nights, and it still didn’t have much of an impact. I figure the urns have been neglected for too long to show much of an improvement. After many nights of soaking the urn in either lime eliminator or vinegar, I was told by a (very distrustful) woman at work that the rep from the company said to only wash the equipment in soap and water, foregoing the de-limer or vinegar. She claims ‘people could get sick’ if the urns aren’t properly rinsed. I want to know what keeps people from properly rinsing food service items. Magically, she’s the only one that talked to the rep. I think she is lying, and suspect her of being too lazy to properly rinse the equipment after I soak it. Anyone have any experience? Should it be soaked, or not?
By whom?
Well, here’s the page from the Bunn website showing cleaning instructions for their commercial equipment. If you can identify the model number of your coffee urns, you can read for yourself what the manufacturer advises.
Edited to add, here is the page with the manuals for their equipment.
Unless Bunn says otherwise, you need to use coffee pot cleaner. Vinegar or lime remover won’t do. Look for something like “Squeakn Clean” or “Clean That Pot”
By yet another person, an actual manager that no longer works there. Current manager is clueless and will side with whoever presents the strongest argument or lie. Found the cleaing instructions linked above, but they all seem more concerned with the inner tubing, whereas I’m more concerned with coffee stains and buildup in the urns. My adversary’s argument was that ‘vinegar or lime away would be useful if we poured water in, (as opposed to being plumbed in) but since we don’t it’s not going to help the urns.’ But, if they admit lime is forming on the piped in lines, isn’t there going to be lime in the coffee that goes into the urns, thus contributing to the stainage and buildup? Makes no sense. I feel I’ll have to call Bunn.
Bunn said to use Tabz. Said a lot could be had for little money, but I’ll have to see if we can get it in through our regular venues, Bunn said it was available from them, and didn’t really give an equivalent product (surprised?). So the search continues. Rep said they soak some of their office urns for two days straight with the stuff.
Bunn / Urnex Tabz are easily found at Amazon. Twelve bucks will buy enough of the stuff to keep you clean for months.
To allay the fears of Ms “People Will Get Sick!” - the dissolved tabz are bright blue, so it’s easy to tell if you’ve rinsed it all out.
I was doing my time in the mess, washing dishes, scrubbing the deck and tables and that sort of thing. One day I emptied out the two big coffee urns we had to scrub them out and found an old scrub pad someone had left in there
I am not surprised.
I was trying to clean a coffee carafe and someone here on the Dope told me to use effordent (S[?) tablets----same thing used to clean dentures. Give it a try; it can’t hurt anything and it worked for me.
Thank you. I would try the tabs if I were having personal problems, but it’s work-related and you’re always going to have someone argue how you do it. They’d look at me as if I were crazy if I popped denture tabs in. I have to settle this argument and have an agreed upon cleaning procedure in place. There’s enough drama going on now, I’m picking my battles wisely for the time being, but will be hashing this one out next week probably, once and for all. I think the manufacturer is going to be the heavyweight here, and they said to soak. I think I’m getting flak because some people don’t want to come to work in the morning and rinse after the soak. They’re actually so lazy they want the coffee scooped out for them in the filter basket so all they have to do is flip the switch. I’ve stopped doing that since a mandate recently came down that it was ‘every shift for itself.’ Besides, the coffee will get stale.:dubious: Oh, the drama! Got a filthy coffee urn, and no one can even agree on how to clean it.