For those who can’t start their day without a hot, frothy cup of coffee, having a coffee maker is essential. Like all kitchen gadgets, it’s important to clean your coffee maker thoroughly and regularly to maintain its performance. If you ever find yourself wanting to brush your tongue with a steel wool pad after tasting your coffee and detecting a hint of coliform, it’s a clear sign to clean your coffee maker more frequently.
Vinegar is often used to clean machines, but it can actually pose a threat to coffee makers. Here’s a quick guide to cleaning your coffee maker without vinegar
What Happens When You Use Vinegar
When it comes to cleaning coffee makers, white vinegar is one of the most popular options. After running the liquid through the machine’s system a couple of times, they give the system a final rinse with clean water.
Vinegar contains acetic acid as its primary chemical component. The acid will effectively remove any build-up as it can dissolve it. In addition, it kills any bacteria or mould present in the machine.
Despite all the good qualities it offers, it doesn’t work well as a cleaner.
It is not feasible to entirely remove the acid from the coffee maker, which is one of the reasons. Therefore, it is likely that you will consume some of the vinegar diluted with your next brew. Multiple health risks are associated with this substance.
Vinegar’s pungent smell is also one reason. When the whole cleaning process is done, your house would smell like acetic acid, which would make you want to escape it!
Possible Alternatives To Vinegar
As a result of knowing the negative effects of cleaning your coffee maker with vinegar, you may be eager to find out if there are alternative cleaning methods.
Several non-toxic and harmless cleaning methods exist to make your coffee maker as clean as possible.
-
Use Lemon Juice As A Cleaner
Lemon juice contains citric acid, which is also a type of acid.
Citric acid has no harmful effects on the body since lemons are widely used for human consumption, even as a medicine. Citrus juice shares many of the same characteristics as white vinegar, due to its acidic nature. As a result, it is a suitable candidate to be used to thoroughly clean your coffee pot.
Preparing lemon juice with citric acid is as simple as formulating a slightly diluted solution. You can run this lemon juice solution through your machine just as you would have white vinegar.
Rinse the coffee pot with regular, clean water once the process has been repeated several times.
-
Use Baking Soda As A Cleaner
Baking soda is known to be an efficient and eco-friendly cleaning agent. It is cost-effective, easily acquired, and does the job. A difference between baking soda and other cleaning products is that baking soda is alkaline, i.e., basic. This product stands out from the rest because of its alkaline properties.
Mix one cup of warm water with a quarter cup of baking soda to clean your coffee maker. The liquid should be smooth, and there should be no lumps of power.
Through the machine’s system, you should run this liquid. Keep repeating the cycle until you like how the cleaning looks. Following the procedure, rinse the entire system with plain water.
-
Use Borax As A Cleaner
Besides borax, another popular cleansing agent is sanitizing borax. Washing machines, refrigerators, and coffee makers are some of the equipment used to clean with this solution. In many households, it is used as a substitute for white vinegar because of its multipurpose properties.
Prepare a few tablespoons of borax in warm water and use it as a cleaner for your coffee machine. Make sure it’s well blended. Then run your coffee machine with the solution. Once the borax solution starts running, maintain the brew speed at medium or heavy.
If you decide to use the coffee pot again after cleaning, make sure you rinse it twice with fresh and clean water.
-
Use Hydrogen Peroxide As A Cleaner
Hydrogen peroxide has fantastic disinfectant properties that are well known to everyone.
Cleaning with it yields superb results for anything and everything. Use hydrogen peroxide to make your coffee machine sparkle.
Combine about one cup of hydrogen peroxide with two cups of water. In the coffee maker, run this mixture four or five times. When you feel convenient, you can brew the coffee for a few more cycles using the standard settings.
The Final Verdict
Probably, you have been using white vinegar solution to clean and treat your coffee maker. To your advantage, it is now time to replace them with nontoxic, safer alternatives. Immediately following the cleaning cycles, flush the system with fresh water to remove any remaining hydrogen peroxide. There are no lingering odours in your coffee maker, which is ready for brewing another tasty cup.
