RULE 13

You need to clean your coffee gear.

Roasted coffee contains more than eight hundred volatile molecular species alone.

Everything that’s good and true about our modern lives requires a cleanup now and then. Your car, your house, your clothes, your toddler—they all must be kept clean for maximum enjoyment. This is especially true with coffee equipment, and it’s the thing home coffee lovers overlook the most. Clean equipment is part of why coffee at your favorite cafe tastes better than what you make at home—they clean their equipment at least once a day—and it’s surprisingly easy to do.

Coffee is a molecularly complex substance (roasted coffee contains more than eight hundred volatile molecular species alone) and the process of grinding and combining it with hot water yields a plethora of sticky, staining residues along the way. Oilsfrom the coffee itself cling to and gum up grinding gear (especially if you like dark roast), and scale dissolved calcium and magnesium salts from water—can form inside your brewing gear.

Brands like Urnex and Cafetto sell cleaning products specially designed to combat coffee residue, and your local grocery store will typically stock these or comparable cleaning products along with filters and whole beans in the coffee aisle. Some cleaners involve grinding a special puck through your grinder, to strip oils and restore functionality. Other styles of cleaner require a good, solid soak using formulations designed to break down scale and coffee residue. None of it is particularly expensive or difficult to manage.

It makes sense if you think about it: you clean your dishes and your glassware and your pots and pans, so of course you need to clean your coffee gear. Once every three to six months should work wonders. This is perhaps the simplest and most important rule we can offer to up your coffee game at home: you gotta keep it clean. Make cleaning a semi-regular part of your home coffee regimen.