So, you got a brand new commercial coffee maker. Congrats. It probably cost a lot of money, so you want it to last for many years and make many cups of wonderful coffee.
Commercial coffee brewers should last for years, but regular maintenance is important.
Maintenance tasks can be divided into three needs:
- Daily maintenance
- Weekly maintenance
- Quarterly maintenance
Daily Maintenance
This is simple and easy. Wipe down the brewer on a daily basis to keep it looking shiny and clean – like a brewer that you’d want you and your guests to get coffee from. Use a clean, damp cloth and a mild, non-abrasive, non-citrus cleaner. Clean the pots and filter basket, or run them through a dishwasher on the top rack. Clean thermal servers and airpots with a bottle brush or sponge and mild detergent. Do not immerse airpots or thermal containers in water.
Weekly Maintenance
Clean the mineral deposits off of the sprayhead that sprays the water into the filter basket. Instructions vary by manufacturer and model, but most sprayheads are removable and can easily be cleaned by hand or run through a dishwasher. Bunn provides a cleaning tool and/or a deliming spring for most of their models that cleans both the sprayhead and the hole where the sprayhead sits.
Cleaning the sprayhead makes for better coffee.
Quarterly Maintenance
This is more involved. The inside of the brewers need to be cleaned of mineral deposits every 3 months or so. Depending on the mineral content of the water going into the brewer and how much coffee is brewed every day, cleaning may be necessary more often.
In order to clean mineral deposits from the inside of a coffee brewer, some type of acid must be used to neutralize and loosen the deposits from the sides of the hot water reservoir and other interior components, tubes and pipes. To help make regular maintenance of your commercial coffee maker a little easier, here are a few tips:
Commercial Coffee Maker Cleaning Tips
- Use a commercial cleaning product, such as Dezcal™.
- Citric Acid – add one ounce of citric acid to the water for one brew cycle of coffee.
- Vinegar – use a mixture of 1 part vinegar to one part water.
On any above the above options, it will be harder to clean an automatic brewer because the acid solution will have to be added to the hot water reservoir directly and then a few cycles will have to be run to get all of the solution flushed from the machine.
Of course, one of the best things you can do to prolong the life of your coffee brewer is to keep most of the minerals from getting into the brewer. This can be done by purchasing a water filter, or, on a pourover brewer, by using filtered water. Reverse osmosis is not recommended because that removes so many minerals that it negatively affects the taste of the coffee, and it may prevent automatic brewers from shutting off correctly.
The Importance Of Regular Maintenance
Remember – keeping your machine clean will mean great coffee for years to come.
