I’m a coffee lover. I drink plain coffee, flavored coffee, cappuccino, latte, espresso, you name it. If has to do with coffee, I like it.
Unfortunately, in my quaint, quiet, rural area, we have extremely hard water. It causes lime scale build up that damages fixtures and appliances. This fact usually leads to me purchase a new coffee maker every year. I usually just pick up the cheapest one I can find, since I know I’ll be replacing it within the year. It became a running joke around here.
One year my adoring children bought me the Cadillac of all coffee makers for Christmas. This thing could whip up an espresso or cappuccino on one side while brewing a pot of regular coffee on the other. It looks like it should be sitting in Starbuck’s or something.
I was determined then that lime scale would not be the death of my killer coffee maker. I began looking at specialty products just for coffee makers. I figured they would be better than putting some toxic lime scale cleaner through an appliance that I would be drinking from later.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that many of these specialty products were just as dangerous as lime scale remover. They tried to make it sound like no big deal, advising me to just rinse thoroughly and run a pot of water through before making coffee. Since that advice left such a bad taste in my mouth, I could only imagine what the actual product might do.
That’s when I went online and discovered that vinegar will do the job just as well, and without poisoning you or your favorite coffee drinker. Now, all I do is fill the pot with three parts vinegar and one part water and run it through the machine twice a month. Once the coffee maker cools off, I run a pot of clean water through to rinse away the vinegar. It works great and now my coffee maker does too.
As a matter of fact, all this talk about coffee is making me want cappuccino. Time to go fire up my nice, clean coffee maker!