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drmatt drmatt
 
M$1 January 29, 2009 03:07 PM

What is the best way to clean out a coffee pot?

I'm looking for something to clean out the pot portion of the coffee maker.  It's looking pretty dark...  (I keep telling my wife "It adds flavor!".)
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tracebooks tracebooks
 
 January 29, 2009 05:07 PM
When I was in college, I worked as a waitress in a nice restaurant for a year. The way the culinary school-trained owner taught me to clean the coffee pots was to put lemon juice, ice, and rock salt in them; let them sit for 5 minutes or so; add more ice and swirl, swirl, swirl for another 5 minutes. Our pots always gleamed!

Yes, it will make them super cold, but if you're using a good pot it doesn't matter. Just be careful not to knock it into anything while you swirl it.  Most people don't realize that most restaurant supply stores will sell to the general public, especially if you have a business license. Then you can get restaurant-grade equipment very inexpensively.
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• Clear answer with experience to back it up. Excellent!


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jasoncalac... jasoncalac...
 
February 01, 2009 07:35 PM - New Source
I was taught this tip in my father's restaurant as well. It is important that you use rock salt or kosher salt with the ice because it's that combination of chunky objects that rips the gunk off the bottom of the coffee pot. We just did this at Mahalo the other day! :-)

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drmatt drmatt
 
February 01, 2009 11:58 PM
And makes holes in ships...

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drmatt drmatt
 
February 04, 2009 04:29 AM
Just did this (2/3/09) and it works GREAT! (Can I change my rating? 5 stars!)

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bbrookin bbrookin
 
January 29, 2009 03:14 PM
HA! I've heard this "adds flavor" excuse before! It probably does, though. It's just not GOOD flavor. I usually run a white vinegar solution through my drip coffee maker about every 10 weeks. Depending on how crusty it is, I use between a quarter and a third of the pot's capacity in vinegar and top it off with wate. The results are good for "sludge" and lime deposits. For the pot only, I'd use strong vinegar solution and let it sit for a bit - maybe fifteen minutes (assuming it's not stainless steel) - then scrub.
Source(s):
One of a long line of coffee addicts.


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drmatt drmatt
 
January 31, 2009 05:20 PM
Yeah... this is good to clean out the coffee maker itself, but it hasn't really worked for the pot itself.

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vandal913 vandal913
 
January 29, 2009 03:15 PM
I found an interesting way to clean a coffee pot on the following website. They suggest putting crushed ice into the coffee pot and swirling it around. The ice 'scrubs' the stains off of the pot, and then you can simply pour the water out when you are done.

It notes that it doesn't work as well with whole cubes as it does with crushed ice, so you might have to pull your hammer out if you don't have an icemaker that does crushed ice!

http://www.howtogetridofstuff.com/stain-removal/how-to-get-rid-of-coffee-stains/

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robbrown robbrown
 
January 29, 2009 03:18 PM
I use Vinegar.

When I clean my coffee maker (by running Vinegar through it a few times), I just let the vinegar sit in the pot overnight. When I dump it out and wash it with soap... out comes the "flavor adding" stains.

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lesliec lesliec
 
January 29, 2009 04:03 PM
My mom swears that by adding ice cubes and salt to your coffee pots they will come clean!

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robbrown robbrown
 
January 29, 2009 04:15 PM - New Source
You might want to be careful with this one. Salt + Ice = Super Cold Quick.

If you have a thin or cheap pot the localized super cold could crack the glass easily.

http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/why-salt-melts-ice.shtml

Now salt water, I could see that helping to clean a pot with a bit of a time.

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jennhollow... jennhollow...
 
January 29, 2009 04:49 PM
I don't know if this is necessarily the best way, but it's the easiest for me - I throw mine into the dishwasher whenever I'm doing a "it's time to get the gung out and use one of those dishwasher cleaners" cycle.  There are a lot of "dishwasher whitening and cleaning" products out there and a number of them have recommendations for what is good to put into the dishwasher while running this cycle.  The coffee pot is on this list, so I jumped at the chance for some easy housekeeping.  It worked like a charm!  Before I had a dishwasher, I found that using Dawn dishwashing liquid with a ScotchBrite scrubby once per week did the trick

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