My parents told me to run vinegar through my coffee pot every so often - so I’m doing that right now as we speak. My father said it cleans the thing (something like that). Does anyone else do this? Is there a better way?
I cut the vinegar with an equal portion of water. That okay?
Junior
I found these cleaning instructions online without difficulty.
Using vinegar is a common cleaning method. I think it’s mainly to dissolve the salt deposits.
…and vinegar is WAY cheaper than the official Mr. Coffee coffeemaker cleaner.
Make sure you use white vinegar, not cider vinegar. It does make a difference.
Don’t forget the ol restaurant technique for cleaning the coffee pot:
1/3 full of ice
1 lemon wedge
1 packet of salt
Swirl around and it cleans up a good 95% of the stuck on gunk.
It’s to get rid of hard water deposits, mostly calcium carbonate. CaCO3 is more soluble in cold water than it is in hot – thus when you take cold tap water and heat it, the carbonates precipitate. This is the scale you find on pots and pans after you boil water away.
Carbonates are quite soluble in acidic environments, thus a weak vinegar solution will dissolve deposits in your coffee pot.
What you’re trying to do when you clean a coffee pot is remove the Calcium Carbonate (sometimes Magnessian Calcium Carbonate) deposits. Any acid will do the trick, but the acetic acid in vinegar is decidedly more gentle than, say, Hydrochloric or Sulfuric acid, much nicer to work with, and easier to get at the grocery store.
That said, a chemist I work with uses Citric Acid instead of Acetic (to clean the water destiller). He says that the Citric Acid complexes with Ca ions better than Acetic. From a practical, coffee pot, standpoint, Citric Acid also has a less objectionable resicual flavor than Acetic Acid. After you run vinegar through the coffee pot, you may need to rinse it several times lest your next pot of coffee taste disgusting.
Obviously, Enderw23’s restaurant recipe uses an easily obtained Citric Acid source. It not only tastes better but may be chemically more effective.
Citric acid is a miracle substance for cleaning plugged shower heads, faucets, water sprayers etc !
All ow me to recommend a commercial product. It is called CLR and it works like a champ. It is one of the few modern products that lives up to its claims. I am sure that it consists largely of citric acid. It smells like a perm at the salon, but does the trick when it comes to cleaning out my glass Chemex[sup]®[/sup] coffee carafe.
This is not quite correct. As far as I know, solubility alway increases with temperature. The scale mentioned is not from a reduction in solubility due to a rise in temperature, but rather a reduction in volume. Basically, as the water boils away, the concentration of the solids in the remaining water increases and the solids precipitate. Eventually all the water leaves and solids are left behind. This occurs even when room temperature water evaporates, whether it is in a dish, glass, or on a shower head. Hot water may contain more dissolved solids because, being hot, solubility is increased.
This same claim is made for the ScaleWatcher, a device that supposedly reduces scale by using a varying electromagnetic field. For a skeptical review of such devices, see http://www.csicop.org/si/9801/powell.html
My father the druggist thought he’d try the hydrochloric acid route, heavily diluted, since we lived in an area with extremely hard water and consequently heavy scale deposits.
It worked fine, better than the vinegar, so the next day he did all the staff coffee makers in his store. They cleaned up nicely, and he was quite proud of himself.
A week later, the coffee maker at home started leaking.
The day after that, the coffee makers at work started leaking.
Stick to vinegar and lemons.
I used to live in a town with extremely hard water, and everyone had to frequently clean their coffee and teapots out with white vinegar and water. It works pretty well. But be sure to dump the vinegar out as soon as you are done cleaning! I received a very nasty surprise one morning after unwittingly making myself a big ol’ mug of vinegar tea.
If you live someplace with extremely hard water there’s a trick you can use to “soup up” acetic or citric acid. Simply dissolve a teaspoon of salt to every couple of cups of the acid. When the salt dissolves, it will react with the citrate or acetate to form hydrochloric acid. This much stronger acid will rapidly eat holes in aluminum, and given a bit of time will even corrode stainless steel cookware. This mix should not be used on coffee makers, as it will corrode the aluminum innards, but it works like a charm on rust stains, plugged up shower heads and the like.