Removing dishwasher smell and taste from coffee machine

January 10, 2023 12:51 AM

We have an old Kenwood coffee machine and we recently put its conical plastic basket (in which you put the paper filter) through the dishwasher. Now the coffee tastes awful – bitter and "chemically" – and I can't work out how to fix it.

As well as the bad-tasting coffee, if I smell the basket of coffee after the machine has been run it smells very strongly of just-completed dishwasher, as if the smell is activated by the hot water.

We've tried soaking the item in hot water, running water through the machine, and giving it a light scrub with baking soda. It's slightly better than it was first time around but I still don't want to drink the coffee (and I'm not that fussy about coffee!).

Everything I've googled so far is about how to remove the taste of bitter, old coffee from the basket by putting it through the dishwasher, not how to remove the smell and taste of dishwasher itself! It was fine before the dishwasher wash. Any ideas?

posted by fabius to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

Best answer: Vinegar might work? Soak in a big bowl of white vinegar then hand wash?

I've also had success getting smells out of plastic by using denture tablets and soaking the item (flasks) in water with 2 tablets.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 1:08 AM on January 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Perhaps the dishwasher water was too hot or the detergent too strong for the particular formulation of plastic in the basket and has broken it down in some way.
posted by fairmettle at 1:56 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I’ve had this happen and know exactly what you mean. I ran a couple of vinegar cleaning cycles in the coffee maker and then ran it with just water till the water coming out of the coffee maker tasted neutral and the horrid dishwasher detergent smell was gone.

I’ve also made the mistake of cleaning coffee maker parts with OxyClean - and the same poor results occurred.

Now if I am soaking the coffee maker basket or carafe, I use PBW which I guess is used to clean beer brewing stuff. It gets everything sparkly clean and leaves no terrible flavors behind.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:15 AM on January 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Thirding vinegar cycles! Just be sure to run water through it a few times until the vinegar smell is gone, as jilaryjade said.

At the very worst you could buy a new basket. Without knowing the model I'm not sure, but googling Kenwood coffee maker basket turned up some results...
posted by Snowishberlin at 6:23 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Put it out in bright sunlight for a while (yeah, probably not so easy to arrange, in the wintertime).
posted by Rash at 12:40 PM on January 10, 2023

My dishwasher smells like an absence of smell when it's done. Maybe your dishwasher needs cleaning? Washing soda or citric acid both seem good at this after scraping out the bottom parts of the dishwasher.
posted by flimflam at 3:46 PM on January 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks all. I put it in some water with denture tablets for a while, then ran 50/50 water/vinegar through it a few times, followed by 3 or 4 lots of water.

It seems to be back to normal now, or at least drinkable. James Hoffman wouldn't approve but it's palatable enough for us!
posted by fabius at 5:37 AM on January 12, 2023