Keeping an aluminium coffee maker clean - also, the wisdom of using aluminium cookware

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have an aluminium coffee maker - a moka pot. I don’t use it very often, and when I opened it up today I noticed quite a bit of black stuff on the bottom of the water chamber, and little white spots.

A friend of mine who fancies himself an expert of all things coffee says that is oxide, and it’s because it might have been put away damp. That might be true, but as far as I know aluminium doesn’t oxidize that way. In fact, I remember from High School that aluminium oxide naturally forms a strong protective layer that insulates the metal from corrosion.

Still, there’s the mysterious and disgusting black stuff. Toiling away with elbow oil and steel wool removed much but not all of it. Suggestions? I wonder if it’s a bad idea to use strong acids in an aluminium container.

Speaking of which, while I was looking for more information I found some alarmist web pages about the dangers of using aluminium cookware. Aluminium is said to be bad for the brain, and maybe a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. That is why, according to these people, you shouldn’t use aluminium cookware: if treated incorrectly, it releases aluminium in the food you cook.

Well, aluminium in the body is actually not good for the health, but on the other side I don’t know how easy it is to get contaminated, and this theory sounds a lot like typical Internet crackpot stuff. Yet I also remember the corroded aluminium pots a friend of mine had years ago. Where did the metal go, if not in the food?

2

Dishwashing detergents were recently (July 2010) forced to remove phosphates from their formulas. Phosphate used to protect aluminum surfaces during the cleaning process. Therefore, you shouldn’t wash aluminum in the dishwasher any more. Doing so will result in a black residue over everything aluminum.

You can use cream of tartar and/or lemon juice to remove the black residue. There are various instructions to be found on the internet.

3

the protective oxide forms in normal air on the dry metal.

if wetness then the corrosin is more agreesive and can cause pitting.

4

Wash the pot immediately it is cool enough to do so. Make sure it’s dry before putting it away.