You’re Cleaning Your Coffee Maker Too Often. Here’s Why That’s Bad

Making a cup of coffee at home might not seem a complicated affair, but there are a host of factors that can affect the quality of your brew — including cleaning your coffee maker with soap or detergent. 

Ditching the soap for your coffee pot and pour-over immersion brewer might seem like dubious advice. In reality, your coffee equipment doesn’t need a scrub down every time you use it. Even small layers of residue from fragrant dish soap or washing detergent will leave you with a sudsy and subpar pot of coffee. 

“It really stays in there; it can mess with the flavor, and so, usually, a good rinse with super hot water is enough for black coffee,” Prabasi said. Oils from the beans may build up over time, so a fragrance-free dish soap comes in handy for the occasional deep clean. A simple rinse with hot water will more than suffice for daily use, however. Save yourself time and avoid any unwanted essence of “soap scum” interrupting the notes of your single-origin Sidama natural roast.   

2. Buying more coffee than you can brew fresh

Filling your coffee pot with tap water will yield less-than-ideal flavors. Filtered water, for most of us, will make a big difference in your coffee’s final flavor. Tap water is often full of byproducts that can easily be filtered with a home water filtration system. 

Almost all of the water you get from the tap in the US is disinfected with low levels of chlorine. The EPA reports that one in five people drink chloramines, a backup disinfectant made of chlorine and ammonia, to kill harmful viruses and bacteria like salmonella. These chemicals make sure we don’t get sick but will alter the taste and smell of tap water. Chloramines are also known to strip lead and copper from pipes, byproducts that can affect even the most carefully prepared coffee. 

5. Forgetting to stop and smell the coffee

Smell can be a dead giveaway that your coffee has gone stale. Prabasi explains that you should immediately open a bag of beans or ground coffee and be able to smell that roasted coffee scent. Aroma is a key indicator of flavor. No aroma means a serious lack of taste. 

Prabasi said stale coffee can taste muddy or flat and lack any complex tasting notes that a bag might list on its label. “ That’s why I think for in the coffee profession, so much of what we do is tasting coffee,” she said. “From the farm to the coffee shop, every step of the way coffee gets tasted or cupped, in our vernacular.”

Old coffee isn’t likely to make you sick, so there’s no need to toss it. You might want, however, to shift from taking your coffee black. Making iced coffee is a simple way to mask the lack of tasting notes. Using an immersion brewer also allows you to steep grounds longer to add a bit more flavor after coffee has dulled. 

6. Ignoring the organic label

Even if you don’t think of coffee as purely a means to an end, many of us treat coffee as simply fuel. Taking coffee in a travel mug to drink as part of a commute isn’t inherently a problem. Prabasi instead invites coffee drinkers to take advantage of any time and ability to savor a cup of coffee. In contrast to the grab-and-go culture in the US, drinking coffee in Ethiopia is an opportunity to slow down and connect with people you care about. “And I like to say — like, I lived in Ethiopia for eight years — I never heard anybody say, ‘I’m gonna grab a coffee,'” Prabasi said. “It was always, ‘Let’s have coffee. Shall we have coffee?'”

Even taking an extra 10 minutes to drink your brew at a cafe instead of requesting a to-go cup can shift the energy of a frenetic morning. “I think there is lot of ritual around coffee and how one enjoys it,” Prabasi said. Taking the time to create your own ritual, whether at home or in a local shop, can help you savor all that coffee has to offer beyond its caffeine content. 

For more coffee intel, here’s how to read coffee labels and the best travel mugs of 2025, tested by CNET.