How to easily clean the Coffee Carafe

Photo taken at: Revocup Coffee House South (Overland Park, Kansas)

Debarshi got into pour-over coffee last year. First he got a small pour-over coffee maker for his office. Then as he liked it more and more he took me to a couple of local coffee places and had me try pour over coffee. If you have never had pour over coffee before then please give it a try. It is so much bolder and fresher than the regular drip coffees. Although if you are in a hurry and want to quickly grab a cup of coffee this may not be ideal for that time. It takes longer to prepare a pour over coffee because it adds water in two stages. 1st, it wets the coffee grounds then lets it sit for 30 seconds so that it can bloom (or expand). 2nd, the dissolution process starts – the hot water starts dissolving the extracts from the bean which produces that richer, bolder flavor. 

So, after much research and testing, last thanksgiving we got a pour over coffee maker for home. We also got a coffee grinder and if you are thinking the grinder is something you can skip then let me tell you, there is a huge difference in flavor between the readymade ground coffee and the one you grind at home. The freshness and aroma is un-matched. Plus, you can grind just a little quantity everyday ensuring the best flavors for your coffee. This is really something you have to try to believe so before making the investment in coffee machine and grinder, go and try some pour over coffee at your local coffee shops.

We got a Cuisinart Coffee Grinder. It has many different grind selections so you can even choose how coarse or fine you actually want your ground beans to be. You can easily refill the bean hopper and then grind fresh coffee which will fill in the grind chamber. It comes with a scoop and cleaning brush as well.

For the coffee machine, we went for Bonavita Coffee maker. The machine may look a bit less impressive but it certainly produces the best coffee. Unlike the drip machines (with many programmable features), this one has only one button. There is no way to put it on timer or set an alarm so that it can start brewing coffee on its own. However, that is something you wont miss. It comes with a stainless steel Carafe which keeps the coffee hot for several hours. This machine is specially designed to brew the perfect cup of pour over coffee and my god, it does just that. 

There is only one thing which will start to bug you after about a month and that is the carafe. Because of the small opening it is not possible to give it a good cleaning everyday and so over time the gunk keeps building. It soon reaches a point when after just a month it starts looking like the most neglected item of your kitchen.

Thankfully, I read a very useful and easy tip online to clean the carafe and today I am going to share it with you. Mind you, unlike the soda and vinegar tricks, this one doesn’t involve that much labor. All you have to do is add a dishwasher tablet to your empty coffee carafe. Then add boiling water in it. You can boil the water in a kettle or straight from the tap with the hot on (as I did it). Then simply close the lid of the carafe and leave it for an hour or so. I was really skeptical after doing this (specially because there are so many different ways to clean the carafe, each one involves more steps or cleaning supplies) but after an hour when I opened the lid, all the gunk had dissolved! I cleaned the carafe several times by simply filling it with room temperature water and washing it out. Believe me, I wasn’t expecting anything much to happen because of the sheer simplicity of the whole process but the result was astonishing! It turned my carafe to a brand new shiny one. I didn’t scrub or clean one bit and the carafe was good as new. The best part, coffee tasted even better the next day.  So, if you own a stainless steel Carafe, give this tip a try and then post on my Instagram or facebook #lifewithoutalu with your photos and comments.