It stopped brewing the water all the way through. We eventually came the point where we would gather around just praying that the beeping noise signalling the end of brewing would not occur until at least there was a cup and a half we could split between us. Now this is not the worst thing that has ever happened but it drove me to Starbucks more often than I should have gone (daily basically) and it's definitely a WhiteWhine sort of problem if you have ever seen that blog.
So one day I had had enough. I was not going to spend money on extra parts, send it away to the Mr. Coffee people, or buy a new machine. I was going to figure out why it was not working and fix it. It turns out that this is a common problem that occurs when mineral buildup accumulates in whatever magical part of the machine heats and runs the water up to brew the coffee and it can theoretically be fixed by running equal parts water (which we took from our Brita filter to be safe) and get this... vinegar.
The idea of our precious machine potentially smelling like a bad vinaigrette was not appealing but in the end I'm glad I tried it. I filled up 6 cups of the filtered water and 6 cups of vinegar and stood guard at the machine. It brewed all the liquid until the very few last drops.
Now came the process of getting rid of the smell of the vinegar, which did wear off after running 3 subsequent cycles of filtered water but we did 2 more just to be safe. After dish washing all the removable parts (plastic filter bucket, disperser container and attachments) it was cured!
Just wanted to share this tip to help you clean out your coffee machine and avoid unnecessary trips to Starbucks (though my local barristas are awesome) and also to save some money instead of immediately replacing parts!
No comments:
Post a Comment