Coffee Machine Tips

Coffee machine tips can help you maintain your coffee maker so that it will provide you with delicious hot coffee for many many years. Knowing a few good tips to keep your machine working well and how to use it can come in handy. Even a die-hard coffee drinker can learn a few tips.

Keep it Clean

A very important coffee machine tip is to keep it clean. And that doesn’t mean just wiping off coffee spatters on the warming plate, though that is a good idea too. To keep your coffee machine running well and your coffee tasting great, you need to clean out the inside as well. Once every 2 months, fill up the water reservoir with a mixture of 2 parts water to 1 part white vinegar. Let the machine run through a full brewing cycle (no coffee or filters in place), and then run 2 more cycles with clear water to rinse out the vinegar. The vinegar helps to dissolve any hard water deposits inside the machine and will help it run better. If you have very hard water, you may want to do this cleaning routine more often.

Use the Right Grind

Depending on the kind of coffee maker you have, you might want to ensure you are using the right coarseness of coffee for optimum brewing. For most drip coffee makers, you will need a medium grind. Any supermarket coffee that comes pre-ground is usually this type, so there shouldn’t be any worries there. But if you are grinding your beans, or getting them ground for you at the store, keep an eye on how fine they are. If your coffee maker is a vacuum pot or a French press, more coarsely ground coffee works best. And if you are making espresso, then you should be getting your beans ground to an extra-fine level.

Brew What You Need

While it’s a fairly common habit to just brew up an entire pot of coffee when you fire up the machine, do you usually drink all 10 cups each day? Coffee that sits on the warming plate all day will be quite stale by the time you get around to drinking it, so why brew it all at once. Brew up a small pot, say 2 or 3 cups, and then make more fresh coffee when that’s done. Single-serve machines take this even further, and you only brew one cup at a time.

Buying Tips

Coffee machine tips for when you are shopping for a new coffee maker, include knowing which bells and whistles you need. Timers for early morning brewing, built-in water filters, strength adjustments, and even machines that have bean grinders too. Why not go all out and get a combo machine that grinds the beans, makes coffee, and can also pull a good shot of espresso too? There are so many different coffee machines out there, you may miss out on the best features because you didn’t even know they existed. Do a little browsing and see what the latest in coffee technology can bring you.