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. 

I recently talked with Sarina Prabasi, founder of the Buunni roastery and trio of coffeehouses in northern Manhattan. The assignment was to root out simple mistakes people overlook when brewing coffee at home.

Buunni specializes in ethically sourced beans from growing regions across Ethiopia, where coffee leans fruity, floral and at times fragrant, like tea. Prabasi relocated with her husband and business partner from Ethiopia, bringing the country’s ethos for hospitality and high-quality coffee with them. The team also creates custom Buunni blends with select beans from around the globe.

As a micro-roaster who serves on the board of the Specialty Coffee Association, Prabasi offered some insight into how to make simple adjustments for a better cup of coffee. She also isn’t one to sweat the small stuff. “You know, we take coffee seriously, but we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” Prabasi said. “So it has to be something enjoyable, otherwise, why would you do it?”

1. Washing your coffee maker too often with 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

Buying in bulk can save time and money at the grocery store but can have disappointing results for coffee drinkers. Purchasing smaller quantities of beans will help avoid drinking stale, flat coffee, especially for the average drinker and households with two or one people. Probasi told us that you’ll know coffee has gone stale because it “can taste like a shadow of itself.” 

The roaster recommends looking for a roast date on the coffee label within one month or ideally within two weeks. (Keep in mind, the “best buy” date is different and isn’t an indicator of freshness.) If you don’t like to grind at home, the roast date needs to be on the fresher side.  

All that said, you needn’t panic about declining flavor like a ticking time bomb in your cupboard. “Every day post-roast doesn’t mean it’s losing freshness, but after two weeks, I’d say it starts to go down,” Prabasi said. Store coffee in an airtight container, but avoid the humid fridge with its plethora of smells that can stick to the beans. 

3. Adjusting more than one thing at a time 

You can find tutorials online recommending brewers, scales, tampers, water filters, grinders and miscellaneous techniques to make the perfect cup. Experimentation is key to crafting your favorite brew, but only if you start with the basics. “So just adjust only the water in the beginning,” Prabasi said.

If you don’t have a kitchen scale, the roaster told us the rule of thumb is to start with two tablespoons of ground coffee per cup of water. The finer the grind, the stronger your coffee will taste, so you’ll need to adjust the grounds-to-water ratio accordingly. If that seems too weak or too strong, then adjust by adding more or less coffee at the same grind level.  

Beyond the basics, you can get creative. “If your coffee is too sour, it’s maybe that you prefer a dark roast,” Prabasi said. Coffee too bitter? You can adjust the type of roast by buying a level down, such as a dark to medium or medium to light. “ If you got a coffee from East Africa, maybe try one from South America, you know, like switch [it] around,” she said. Changing one element at once ensures you know which step affected the result for better or worse. 

4. Taking water straight from the tap 

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

The multitude of coffee brands at the grocery store can feel overwhelming. To help sift through the masses, Prabasi explains the organic coffee label is a sign of quality that’s important for coffee. 

“If you can, then I think for coffee and tea, organic is really important because coffee and tea crops, especially from large farms, tend to get really over-sprayed,” Prabasi said. Pesticides are sprayed right onto the coffee cherries, and coffee is unlike an apple that you can wash or a banana that you peel before eating. Tea leaves go through a similar process where anything left on the leaves will then be steeped into your mug.

The coffeehouse owner made it clear that she doesn’t believe coffee needs to be expensive to be considered “good.” Great coffee is made for a variety of budgets. “ I think the care that goes into and some reflection on the care that goes into sourcing it, to roasting it or just serving it, I would be looking for those things,” Prabasi said. The organic label is a helpful place to start.

7. Always taking your coffee ‘to go’

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.