MICRO test- does highly filtered water reduce need to clean coffee maker

[vwmaniaman]

I have a 1-2 year old Kenmore drip pot that has a carbon filter at the entrance to the heater. Coffee is OK but I still prefer perked coffee. It still takes the same amount of time to perk as it did when I first bought it.

 

[97prizm]

Micro test.

Decided to clean a Keurig pot/ pod coffee maker today. Water is highly calcified city water, also high in PH and alkaline.

Water goes through generic triple filter before hitting coffee maker water dispenser. Coffee maker was likely last cleaned nine months ago. Coffee maker is used daily.

Coffee maker appears to be brewing slow, but no tests of measurements to back up the crude observation.


Cleaner is Nuvera, under $5 USD at Walmart.cleaner ingredients are water, glycolic, sulfamic, and citric acids.

I use a coffee filter to measure calcium and other deposits. After running the cleaner through the coffee maker, no visible deposits in the filter. Just a few grains of coffee.

Conclusion- cleaning a coffee maker that uses highly filtered water may not pay dividends on the investment in money and time.

Additionally, I also purchased the Keurig cleaner, will run a like test in a few months with the Keurig cleaner, which has some different ingredients, and see if results stay static or change.
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I use the Kuereg cleaner a few times per year in my percolator coffee

 

[kschachn]

A lot has to do with the mineral content of your tap water. When I lived in the City of Milwaukee and we had Lake Michigan water which is extremely low minerals we never had any issue with scaling or deposits. But now in a suburb with well water, if I didn’t have a softener things would scale up solid in no time.

 

[bdc101]

A lot has to do with the mineral content of your tap water. When I lived in the City of Milwaukee and we had Lake Michigan water which is extremely low minerals we never had any issue with scaling or deposits. But now in a suburb with well water, if I didn’t have a softener things would scale up solid in no time.

This is really important to consider. Just because you are on well or city water (or whatever) doesn't mean you have better or worse quality water. In one area the well water might be very hard but the city water comes from a reservoir or a river that's much cleaner. In another area the well water might be great and the city water could be very hard. In other areas there are multiple water utilities feeding the same neighborhoods, with different sources and qualities of water. In some areas (like mine), they get the water from a river fed by snowmelt for most of the year but in the summers they have to supplement it with large municipal wells located in town, so the water changes during the year.

You can look all this up with your water utility too and I would encourage that if you are so inclined. Especially when we're talking about important things like the quality of your coffee.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

I only use distilled water in my Keurigs and Mr. Coffee. Our water not only is hard water, it also has arsenic in it. Not a lot, but any amount is too much IMO. Other metals in our water too.

I have been thinking of whole house RO or other filter. I don't like water softeners. If I get a whole house system I will still use distilled water in the coffee makers.

Did it say organic or inorganic? Organic, as I understand it, isn't a big deal as it gets flushed by the body.

 

[Vil_Riker]

My parents just boil tap water in San Francisco to remove the chlorine, no calcium deposits in the Zojirushi kettle. When I moved out in college I got a lot of calcium deposits with the rural / suburb ground tap water.

I used citric acid to clean it and they would dissolve, with no flakes coming out of the kettle. I started going to water store to get their RO water and no more calcium build up.

I have a steamer now and over time tap water would form a crust at the bottom of the steamer. However that crust look different than the kettle crust from back then. It is a crust of food crumbs and calcium. Citric acid is pretty much the only thing that dissolve it, not vinegar, because they stay behind instead of boil off below water boiling point, vinegar would boil off too early, and over a few days of steaming it would clean off the crust.

My conclusion is citric acid work over time, and calcium crust from evaporation is real. You have to take a look at the heating element visually to confirm instead of relying on hard particle on a filter to verify.

It reminded me of this clip in an old Soviet movie. I can attest that water in Dilizhan is much better than San Francisco, though.

 

[2005jettatdi]

We're neighbors by western standards and have the same water. I use distilled water in the coffee maker and find the 14 cents per cup an acceptable cost compared to undersink RO systems and cleaning the coffee maker etc. I installed an electronic descaler to deal with the calcium deposits everywhere else and it works quite well and requires no maintenance.

Speaking of antelope, I saw five of them when I hiked Arizona Hot Springs a couple of weeks ago. I did not know they came into an area that dry. Arizona Hot Springs trail is four miles south of Hoover Dam. It is presently closed until October because of the heat.