About 8 months ago our venerable Italian pod coffee maker died a horrible death when a significant quantity of icky black liquid emerged from where its workings hid, and it refused to provide anything else.
I investigated purchasing another, but they've gone up considerably in price and besides I couldn't purchase one in Campbell River, so I broke down and bought a Keurig. It works fine, and makes excellent coffee if one feeds it excellent beans.
Which I do, because we're old and very particular about our coffee these days!
Anyway, I know about pod coffee makers: you have to de-gunge and de-scale them about every 6 months, right?
Right. So I googled it and discovered, as anticipated, that vinegar was the solution.Unless you read the Keurig instructions, of course. They tell
you to purchase their patented Keurig de-scaling solution.
I naturally concluded this advice, which comes in the box, is for idiots who don't know about vinegar's amazing de-scaling and de-gunging properties.
So I replaced the water in the reservoir with vinegar, placed a mug under the outlet, and started the usual coffee-making process.
The first cup came out as expected, hot and vinegary. Then the second cup stalled: the little pump that blasts the hot water through the coffee in the pod refused to expel more than a couple of tablespoons into the mug before stopping.
I started thinking my newish coffee maker had been so insulted by the vinegar, that it had quit on me. I started thinking what I would need to do to replace a newly-defective machine.
However, the little water it produced looked fine, and was heated appropriately, so I removed the excess vinegar from the reservoir, filled it up with cold water and carried on, producing a few tablespoons of liquid each time.
By about the 8th or 9th attempt, the machine started to reward me with a little more each time, and by the 12th time it was producing heated water in the appropriate quantity.
So I ground some fresh coffee, scooped it into the re-usable pod, and fired up the coffee maker once more.
The coffee was excellent, as always.
But I may have to re-think that vinegar solution, next time.
