Cleaning The Coffee Grinder: Practical Tips and Home Remedies

It’s that easy to clean your coffee grinder

Freshly ground beans give the coffee an incomparable aroma. No wonder, then, that the coffee grinder is simply indispensable in many kitchens. However, you should clean this little helper regularly. This works with simple home remedies.

• Whether grandma’s old grinder with the hand crank or the electric grinder – you should wipe out the bean container every now and then with a lint-free cloth. Depending on your needs, you can also vacuum out any crumbs or brush them off with a brush.
• Avoid using dishwashing liquid if possible. Because the residues often cannot be completely removed and then have a negative effect on the taste and aroma of the coffee. Bean containers suitable for dishwashing are an exception.
• With some machines, it is possible to remove the grinder for cleaning. In this case, you can easily brush off any coffee residue and rinse the grinder thoroughly. If you use dishwashing detergent, you should rinse with plenty of cold water.
• If you cannot remove your grinder, you can also use spelled grains to remove the oily residue from the coffee. To do this, grind a small amount of the grains into a fine powder. The spell binds the fat in the coffee beans and thus cleans the machine.
• However, you should avoid using rice. Although this is often recommended for cleaning the grinder, it is very hard and could damage the grinder. In exceptional cases, however, this can also be the case with spelled grains. An alternative is the so-called grindz, which are very expensive.

Why and how often you should clean your coffee grinder

With the right care, you will be able to enjoy your coffee grinder for many years and always be able to grind aromatic coffee in it. In this chapter, you will find out how often you should clean your grinder and why this is so important.

• Coffee beans contain oils that can build up in the machine. Like other fats, this oil can go rancid and negatively affect the flavor of your coffee.
• During the grinding process, there are always small fragments of coffee beans that can get stuck in the grinder. If these are not removed regularly, you can ensure that the result is no longer uniform.
• In the worst case, the consequence of this can be that the grinder gets completely stuck. Because the small pieces of beans can block the grinder and even make the machine completely unusable.
• How often you should clean your machine mainly depends on how often you use it. A good guideline is about 15 kilograms of coffee. After you’ve ground this amount of beans with your machine, it’s time to clean up.
• If you like to grind particularly dark coffee beans, more frequent cleaning may be necessary. Because the darker the bean, the longer it was roasted. The proportion of water is correspondingly lower and the proportion of oils is higher.