How to Clean Coffee Pot Tips!

How to clean coffee pot hints and tips from the CoffeeMaker411 community.

We've all seen those nasty, stained, smelly coffee pots... YUCK!!! How to clean coffee pots is a question we are asked quite regularly - especially in the office situation, where it seems no one wants the job!

But it doesn't have to be a big deal, and it really doesn't take all that long. Below you will read a few different options for cleaning your coffee pot or carafe. If you have a better solution, we'd love to hear it, and share it around. Tell us your own ideas about cleaning coffee makers.

There are a lot of fancy chemicals around that people pay a lot of money for, to keep their kitchen appliances sparkling clean and fresh. But as we learned in the section on using vinegar to clean your coffee maker there are plenty of other cheaper, and safer ways of doing this job. While on the subject of how to clean coffee pots, your best friends will be hot water, and a good strong dish cloth. You'll want to avoid using steel wool or other abrasive materials when cleaning, that can scratch your appliances.

Now my dear wife has another method she swears by. After rinsing with hot water to soften the oils/mineral build up, she uses baking soda and white vinegar together. About a teaspoon of baking soda, mixed with a good splash of white vinegar creates a really neat little reaction, that works a treat on stains and marks...

My wife uses this trick to clean all sorts of things around the house!

Baking soda is basically a chemical called sodium bicarbonate. While vinegar is just a weak (5%) solution of acetic acid in water. When the two are mixed, there are actually two separate reactions that occur. The first reaction is an acid base reaction which creates a new chemical called carbonic acid (H2CO3). The second reaction, known as a decomposition reaction, creates carbon dioxide gas (CO2) and water (H2O).

To get really nerdy, you could say that when you mix baking soda and vinegar, this happens -
NaHCO3 (aq) + CH3COOH (aq) ---- CO2 (g) + H2O (l) + CH3COONa (aq)

But that might be going too far right???

Another tip we have recieved on coffee pot cleaning, was to mix ice cubes or rock salt in with your vinegar, lemon juice or citric acid mix. The idea is that the ice or rock salt 'polishes' the inside of your carafe. Helping to remove the stains quicker. We haven't tried that one yet. So please let us know if you have, and what result you got.

So, if you've got another idea on how to clean coffee pots or coffee makers, we'd love to hear about it. Simply click here and share your tips with the CoffeeMakers411 community. Or you can read other peoples coffee maker cleaning solutions here.

Related Pages

How to use Vinegar to Clean Coffee Pot

Bunn Coffee Maker Cleaning

How to Clean Coffee Makers

Read other peoples Cleaning Tips

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