A great coffee maker cleanse!

Sluggish coffee makers are often due to mineral deposits.

When you've paid for premium fresh-roasted coffee beans, it's best to keep your coffee maker perking efficiently!

If your coffee maker takes too long to brew it will result in over-brewed, bitter-tasting coffee. The best coffee maker we owned took only 4 minutes for 6 cups, and 6 minutes for a full pot. Anything longer than that begins to burn the grounds.

Aside from a poorly designed coffee maker, sluggish coffee makers frequently are the result of lime, calcium and other minerals deposited in the tubing from water (especially hard water.) The acid in vinegar can often remove much of the deposit.

This is the cleanse that we use about twice a year. If you have hard water you might want to do this more often.

directions for mineral cleanse:

Mix 1 pot of the following solution in your coffee maker's carafe (to the max capacity).. half water, half white vinegar. Pour the solution in to the water tank, turn on the machine and run it through your coffee maker without a filter.

Turn off the machine, do not dump the solution but let everything rest 1/2 hour. Now run the same solution through again (or if it is really cloudy, start with fresh solution again.) After the second cycle, dump the vinegar brew out, fill the maker with fresh water and run a brew cycle.. then repeat with another pot of fresh water.

Two fresh water cycles should remove the flavor of the vinegar and your machine should perk up quite a bit!!

A good plan to remember: Change of clock, change of seasons... time to clean your coffee maker!