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Equipment

How to Clean Your Coffee Pot

For the best coffee, get your carafe sparkling.
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Published June 15, 2022.

How to Clean Your Coffee Pot

I’ve owned our favorite automatic drip coffee maker for years. I love it so much I recommended it to my parents (who now own it) and I recently convinced a friend of mine to add it to her wedding registry. It consistently brews excellent pots of coffee—smooth and velvety, perfectly balanced. Plus, its thermal carafe keeps the coffee hot long after brewing.

The last time my mom was visiting, she looked into our carafe and noticed some spotted, brown coffee stains. I love finding easy ways to clean things I didn’t even realize I needed to clean (hello, toaster oven gunk!), so when my mom said she had a way to remove those stubborn coffee stains, I was all ears.

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Her method? Put a sliced-open dishwasher tablet into the pot, cover it with hot water, and let it sit overnight. In the morning, rinse out the pot a few times with warm water. That’s it!

I took her suggestion and was floored by the results. The carafe was sparkling clean with all of the coffee stains removed. Since then, I’ve been doing this once a week and our coffee pot sparkles like new every time.

It’s not just about looks, though. Those left-behind coffee stains can impart acidic flavors to your coffee. By deep cleaning our carafe every week, we ensure fresh-tasting, delicious coffee every morning. 

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I reached out to Moccamaster—the manufacturer of our winning automatic drip coffee maker—to see what they thought of this stain-removal method. It turns out that they suggest the exact same steps. (I guess moms really do know best.)

They also recommend descaling the coffee machine with either Cleancaf or Biocaf, which removes mineral buildup inside the machine and helps get the carafe clean as well. But for a deep clean of just the carafe, I’ll stick with dishwashing pods since I already have them in the house and they work so well.

Follow this simple suggestion to remove stubborn, stuck-on coffee stains. Your morning brew will thank you.

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