If you want your coffee maker to work its best, delivering amazing flavors and aromas in every cup you brew, it’s important to clean it regularly. While vinegar is a common choice for cleaning coffee makers, some people avoid it due to its scent or the fact that it may damage certain parts of some machines.
Thankfully, you can use several alternatives to avoid some of these issues.
Keep reading to learn more about these cleaning methods and why they work, why it’s important to clean your coffee maker, how to know when it’s time to clean it, and more.
Reasons to Avoid Cleaning a Coffee Maker With Vinegar
While vinegar can be an effective way to clean a coffee maker, there are several reasons why you may want to avoid using it. First, it has a very strong scent that many people find irritating to work with.
In a similar vein, the taste of vinegar is very strong and may linger for a while, and could impact the flavor of your coffee if you don’t rinse the machine properly.
Also, using vinegar to clean your coffee maker may damage your machine. Because it’s an acid, it may degrade parts of your coffee maker over time, especially if they’re made of rubber or metals like aluminum.
Methods for Cleaning a Coffee Maker Without Vinegar

If you’ve decided against using vinegar to keep your coffee maker clean, you can try a few alternative methods.
We highlight four alternatives below, breaking down the cleaning process step-by-step for each.
Baking Soda
Baking soda is a popular choice, and it works wonderfully for cleaning a coffee maker because it's an alkaline substance and a mild abrasive that removes all the deposits, coffee oil, and other grime that may build up on the inside of your machine.
It’s also good for cleaning your stainless steel coffee pot, as it’s gentle enough not to damage the pot but still cleans it effectively.
Follow these steps to clean your coffee maker with baking soda:
- Fill the water reservoir in your coffee maker with a mix of water and baking soda. Generally, a 4:1 or 2:1 mix of water and baking soda is best.
- Run a brewing cycle to run the mixture through the machine.
- You can repeat the process if your machine is extra dirty or you’re not convinced that one run was enough.
- Once the mixture has cycled through the machine, run a cycle or two of clean water through the coffee maker to remove all the baking soda.
Lemon Juice
Lemon juice is a solid choice for cleaning because it's acidic like vinegar, but doesn’t have as strong a smell and isn’t quite as harsh on rubber. It also acts as a disinfectant and easily removes stains, grease, odors, and more from your machine.
If you want to clean your coffee maker with lemon juice, follow these instructions:
- Mix equal parts of lemon juice and water, and add the solution to your water reservoir in the coffee maker.
- Run a brewing cycle just as you would if you’re making coffee.
- Once the cycle is complete, run another cycle with clean water to remove any leftover residue or the scent and flavor of the lemon juice.
Denture Tablets
Despite not being their primary use, denture tablets are wonderful for keeping your coffee maker fresh and clean. This is due to their ingredients, which feature a mild bleaching agent, chemical oxidants, and baking soda.
Many of these ingredients help dissolve buildup, remove stains, and disinfect the inside of the machine.
To clean your coffee machine with denture tablets, you need to:
- Add a denture tablet to your coffee maker’s water reservoir and fill it with water.
- Once the tablet fully dissolves in the water, run a brewing cycle.
- After the cycle finishes, remove the solution and run a clean water cycle to remove any leftover residue or buildup.
Citric Acid
Finally, citric acid is another useful vinegar substitute for cleaning your coffee maker. For those unfamiliar with it, citric acid is a naturally occurring component of citrus fruits, which acts as an effective cleaner.
It breaks down mineral buildup, dissolves deposits, cuts through grease, and even has some antibacterial properties.
Use citric acid to clean and freshen up your coffee maker by doing the following steps:
- Mix a few tablespoons of citric acid with a cup of water, and add the mixture to your machine’s water reservoir.
- Run a brewing cycle or two if one cycle isn’t enough to clean your coffee maker.
- After the cycle finishes, get rid of the mixture and run a cycle or two with clean water to remove any residue or remnants of the acid.
Why It’s Important to Regularly Clean Your Coffee Maker

Now that you’re aware of some of the best ways to keep your coffee maker clean without using vinegar, why is it so important to even clean it in the first place?
Let’s take a look at the main reasons.
1. Prolong the Lifespan of the Machine
One of the primary reasons to clean your coffee maker often is to prolong its lifespan. If you don’t clean the machine for months, the pipes and filters inside may get clogged, which could accelerate the coffee maker's wear and tear.
Similarly, the moving parts inside a coffee maker may work more slowly or not at all if you’ve neglected the machine for too long.
Regular maintenance of your coffee maker helps prevent the slow buildup of scales, oils, and leftover grounds. It may make the difference between replacing your coffee maker every few years and having it reliably brew your morning cup for many years to come.
2. Improve the Taste of Your Coffee
Next, a lean coffee maker ensures your coffee tastes as delicious as possible. Cleaning the machine prevents the buildup of natural oils and minerals, which may negatively impact flavors and make coffee taste acidic, bitter, or rancid.
Even if you have incredibly high-quality coffee beans and use filtered water for every brew, it may still taste a little funky if you haven’t cleaned the machine in a while.
3. Prevent Health Issues
In addition to poor taste, neglecting your coffee maker can also be bad for your health. If you don’t clean it often enough or well enough, bacteria and mold can begin to grow.
As you continue using the machine with this mold or bacteria inside it, these may find their way into your coffee, potentially making you sick.
How to Know When It’s Time to Clean a Coffee Maker
There are a couple of telltale signs that should alert you that it’s time to clean your coffee maker. First, if your coffee starts tasting strange out of nowhere, it may be telling you that the machine needs to be cleaned.
For example, if your dark roast coffee begins to taste bitter or burnt, it may be due to the oil and mineral buildup in the machine. Similarly, if your coffee maker has an awful scent either in your coffee or the machine itself, it’s likely due to a lack of proper cleaning.
The machine itself can give signs it wants to be cleaned. If you begin hearing strange sounds like buzzing, clicking, humming, grinding, or rattling, the buildup within the machine may be impacting its ability to work.
Of course, if there are visible signs that the coffee maker is dirty (such as stains, oil residue, bacteria, or mold), you should clean it as soon as possible.
Don’t Forget to Clean Other Coffee Equipment
If you clean your coffee maker and notice that issues like strange flavor or poor scent persist, the problem may stem from somewhere other than your coffee maker.
For example, it could be your coffee grinder causing the problem thanks to inconsistent grind size, grind retention on the blades, or even clogs from oils or other types of buildup.
If you think that may be the case, don’t hesitate to clean your coffee grinder or even replace it and see if that helps.
Also, keep in mind the other things that come into contact with your coffee. Even forgetting to clean your mugs properly or the spoon you use to stir may impact the flavor of your coffee.
Frequently Asked Questions: Cleaning a Coffee Maker
Here are a few commonly asked questions about cleaning a coffee maker, with their answers.
1. What Are Some Alternatives to Cleaning a Coffee Maker With Vinegar?
If you’d rather not clean your coffee maker with vinegar, other options include baking soda, lemon juice, denture tablets, and citric acid.
2. Why Do Some People Avoid Using Vinegar to Clean a Coffee Maker?
While vinegar is popular for cleaning coffee makers, people often avoid using it due to the strong scent and the fact that the flavor of vinegar may linger in the coffee maker.
3. Are Coffee Makers Easy to Clean?
Yes, coffee makers are relatively easy to clean as you only need a few materials to do the job, and there are generally no complicated or confusing steps in the process.
4. How Do I Know When to Clean a Coffee Maker?
There are several signs that it may be time to clean your coffee maker, such as hearing strange sounds, your coffee tasting different, the machine working slowly, the maker smelling terrible, or visible signs of residue or buildup.
5. Is It Expensive to Clean a Coffee Maker?
No, cleaning your coffee maker is relatively affordable, as most materials you use are easy to find and fit most budgets.
6. What Happens if I Don’t Clean My Coffee Maker?
If you don’t clean your coffee maker, your coffee may taste worse, the machine’s lifespan will be shorter, and mineral deposits and residue will build up in the machine. All of these issues can hinder your coffee maker from working well, affect the taste of your coffee, and even pose a health risk.
7. How Should I Clean the Exterior of My Coffee Maker?
To keep the exterior of your coffee maker looking clean, use a soft microfiber towel and warm, soapy water to wipe down the various components of the machine. Make sure to dry it with an equally soft towel or cloth.
8. Will Cleaning My Coffee Maker Impact the Flavor of the Coffee?
As long as you rinse the coffee maker out with water a few times after cleaning it, you shouldn’t taste any of the cleaning ingredients when making a cup of coffee. However, cleaning gives you a better-tasting cup of coffee as you eliminate lingering oils and residue from past brews.
9. What Are Some Ways to Ensure Your Coffee Maker Stays Clean Longer?
Some ways to keep your coffee maker clean between deep cleans include rinsing it with water daily, wiping the interior and exterior, and letting some water soak in the carafe periodically. Doing this minor maintenance means you’ll have fewer bigger cleaning projects in the future, and it keeps your coffee maker functioning.
10. How Long Does It Take to Clean a Coffee Maker?
While it varies depending on your method and whether you’re doing a quick or deep clean, cleaning your coffee maker usually takes around 30 minutes to an hour.