How Often You Should Clean Your Manual Coffee Grinder
How often you should clean your manual coffee grinder will affect the quality of your coffee. Many coffee enthusiasts love making coffee from the beans that they grind themselves.
However, some feel that their coffee tastes better if they prefer it themselves, so they use a manual coffee grinder. If you use a manual coffee grinder, you need to know how often you should clean it.
The frequency of cleaning your manual coffee grinder depends on how often you use it. If you use the grinder daily, you should clean it once every two weeks. But if you are using darker and oilier coffee beans, you need to clean the grinder once a week.
True enough, cleaning your coffee grinder is essential to keep it in good shape. However, you should also have enough knowledge about how you can clean it properly.
Steps for Cleaning Your Manual Coffee Grinder
There is something about coffee that satisfies people. Such is especially true if you are preparing your coffee yourself.
Moreover, people who always want their brew fresh prefer to use a coffee grinder.
Coffee grinders, such as the manual one, are great equipment if you want to make a cup of fresh-tasting coffee. However, coffee beans leave fragrance and oil residue. This residue turns rancid and goes stale in the long run, which affects the flavor of your coffee.
That said, you need to clean your manual coffee grinder regularly as well.
You do not necessarily need to dismantle your grinder when cleaning it entirely. Likewise, you do not need to scrub it part by part.
But if that is the cleaning you want, it is ideal to ask for help from an experienced individual. The reason is that disassembling and putting the grinder back together can be difficult. Also, if you are not familiar with dismantling coffee grinders, you might damage them accidentally.
When you are cleaning your manual coffee grinder, your primary focus should be the oil buildup. You will find it in the dosing chamber, where the coffee ground accumulates after the grinding process. In addition, cleaning the hopper is vital as that is where you store the coffee beans.
Moreover, two ways indicate when it is time to clean your manual coffee grinder. The first one is determined by how often you use your coffee grinder and how many beans you are grinding.
If you are using your coffee grinder regularly, like the ones used commercially, you need to clean it once every two weeks.
Meanwhile, if you use your manual coffee grinder for dark and oily beans, such as the beans used for making espresso, you should clean it once every week.
Finally, if your coffee grinder is only for personal use, cleaning it once a month is fine.
Additionally, it would help if you kept an eye on your manual coffee grinder’s physical condition. Check the internal parts to see if there is an accumulation of oil on the surfaces. If you find oil buildup, that is when you need to give the grinder some deep, thorough cleaning.
How to Clean Your Manual Coffee Grinder
It is significantly crucial that you know how to clean your coffee grinder properly. The reason is that when you are not knowledgeable about proper cleaning, you may not be able to clean the surfaces thoroughly. Such will result in a lousy brew when you make your next cup of coffee.
Coffee oil buildup leaves a long-lasting residue, which imparts a sour taste to your brew. Additionally, coffee grounds sometimes clog the burr, making it difficult for your manual grinder to make even coffee grounds.
That said, you need to follow some steps for cleaning your manual coffee grinder.
1. Take off the grit from the grinder
Grinding the coffee into tiny particles creates a lot of little powder. These particles will coat the internal surface of the grinder’s hopper and the edges of the burr. They will also find ways into the crannies and nooks where they do not belong.
To clean these particle buildups, remove the hopper and force air into it using a can of compressed air.
You should also check the chute from where your grinds dispense. See if it is clogged or coated with coffee grinds. If it is, you can use either your finger or a toothbrush to rustle it lose.
Next, use compressed air to blow out the remaining grounds. You can also lay a clean towel on your countertop and bang out the grinder by giving it hard taps against your countertop. This step will allow you to remove the loose residues from the grinder.
2. Remove the grease
The surface of your coffee grinder works well in retaining oil and coffee fragrance. Such is something that you need to clean thoroughly.
To do that, remove the empty bean hopper from the grinder and wipe down the inside walls.
If the grinds chamber of your equipment is removable, you can wash it with mild dish soap and running water instead of wiping it. Please pay close attention to the corners as they accumulate piles of coffee grounds.
3. Clean the dem burrs
There are various ways of cleaning your grinder’s burrs, so many that you would find lots of disagreement about it. Some people suggest using:
- Rice
- Quick oats
- Grinder-cleaning pellets
Meanwhile, other people recommend taking out the burr sets and brushing them clean.
However, using the cleaning materials mentioned above can only add up to the dust buildup in your coffee grinder. Running rice and oats through coffee grinders can bind the burrs. In the end, you will still need to open it up and clean it anyway.
For that reason, using rice as a cleaning solution is not ideal. Instead, you can remove the burr sets from the equipment and scrub the insides using a toothbrush to remove the coffee buildup. Of course, you can also remove the inner burr sets, but that is a complicated process.
Using grinder-cleaning pellets is ideal and convenient. But, it is worth noting that it may also create dust in extended use.
4. Wipe down the grinder’s surfaces
This step may sound pretty easy. But if you have tried it before, you know that it is easier said than done.
The reason is that coffee grounds are virtually magnetic. For this reason, they stick to almost everything. Such makes them difficult to wipe away.
If you are thinking about using a damp cloth to help remove the coffee dust, it is essential to note that it is not ideal. Even the slightest wetness or humidity can result in more coffee ground buildup in your grinder.
For that reason, you should stick with using a dry cloth, such as microfiber cloths. Thinner fabrics will also work better in cleaning your manual coffee grinder.
5. Season the manual coffee grinder
This step is entirely optional. But you can go all out with your newly cleaned coffee grinder by seasoning it.
When cleaning your manual coffee grinder, you are stripping the coffee fragrance and flavor from it. What you need to do is to add some of that flavor back to the grinder.
To do this step, grab a few coffee beans and run them through the grinder. This process will allow you to add a fresh coat of fragrance and coffee oil to your grinder’s surface.
But do not use coffee beans that are too good for this process. The reason is that you will need to toss the grounds away after coating the grinder with flavor and oil. Using good coffee beans will be a waste, so use your spare ones instead.
