Fix my morning

November 13, 2014 6:36 PM

When I turn my coffeemaker on, it acts like it's in the final stage of brewing (the loud gurgly part when all the steam comes out) the entire time. It results in painfully slow coffee brewing. Also, the end result is much less volumetrically than it should be -- I'll put 12 cups of water into the carafe, and get maybe 8 cups of coffee. What gives?

This is the second machine in six months to succumb to the same affliction. The first machine was a freebie from Gevalia that I'd had and used for 5+ years, so I assumed it had given up the ghost, so I got a new Proctor Silex machine. I've used the PS for 5 or 6 months, and now it's doing the same thing.

I use/used a gold mesh coffee filter in both machines, though the Gevalia was a cone and the PS is a basket. I have removed the filter basket and rinsed it, and I have peered into the carafe and not seen anything unusual.

I am assuming the difference between water in and coffee out is due to loss as steam. What could be causing the excess of steam/sloth/gurgle? I don't want to have to buy a new drip machine every 6 months.

posted by coppermoss to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Is there any chance that you aren't pouring the water into the correct area? This happened to us on vacation and it took a few days to figure out that we (multiple people acting independently) were mistakenly pouring the water into the vented top portion when in fact it should have gone in the space next to the filter.
posted by defreckled at 6:41 PM on November 13, 2014

Run a buncha vinegar through it. Same thing happens with my coffee machine and a twice yearly vinegar run clears it out.
posted by Sternmeyer at 6:43 PM on November 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

Had this same problem with my machine, and a couple of runs with diluted white vinegar, followed by several with just plain water, fixed things right up.
posted by pecanpies at 6:43 PM on November 13, 2014

Did the machines brew coffee correctly at first and this problem worsen over time? If so, nthing running vinegar through it.

Do you have hard water? I found this was an issue until I moved to a house with a water softener.
posted by methroach at 6:52 PM on November 13, 2014

The coffeemaker slurps up a tubefull of water, and runs it past a heating element before dispensing the hot water into the basket. The thing that makes a coffeemaker gurgle loudly as its finishing is when there's not a full volume of water in the tube, so the heating portion overheats the water and it's boiling away as it dispenses. You're having that same symptom during the whole run, which implies that the tube isn't getting full of water, for example with a blockage. Blockages might be objects, but are more likely to be gunk; the most common gunk is minerals left behind by clean water. This has happened to multiple coffeemakers at your current address, which implies that you may have mineral-filled water that does this easily. Vinegar is the thing that dissolves the mineral deposits and clears out the system.
posted by aimedwander at 6:56 PM on November 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Nthing minerals precipitated from hard water. Chicago's drinking water is quite hard at around 150 mg/L of CaCO3. In contrast, NYC's soft water is only around 20.
posted by slkinsey at 7:37 PM on November 13, 2014

Some of the water ends up mixed with the coffee grounds. You'll never get all of it back out again.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:29 PM on November 13, 2014

Another vote for a run-through with white vinegar. And do this regularly, before these issues start to happen.
posted by Leontine at 7:00 AM on November 14, 2014

A vinegar cycle or two would be your first course of action, but if that doesn't work, check out this askme. If you've ever spilled coffee grounds into the water reservoir (this happens sometimes when the basket overflows due to the carafe not being seated properly to disengage the pause'n'pour thingie), you could have grounds stuck in the tube that takes the water past the heating element. The fix is the same: disassemble the machine and unclog the tube.
posted by caryatid at 8:37 AM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Vinegar has always worked at my house, but I wound up using coffee pot degunker* for the disgusting office coffee pot.

Coworkers thought a coffee miracle had occurred overnight.


* Works great on other stuff, too. ooooh, shiny!
posted by BlueHorse at 12:32 PM on November 14, 2014

Response by poster: I spent most of today running vinegar and hot water through the machine, to no avail. What eventually worked was plunging a Philips-head screwdriver into the hole in the bottom of the carafe and wiggling it around. I dislodged a solid chunk of coffee-gunk about the size of an entire human fingernail, and now it's working a-okay.
posted by coppermoss at 6:47 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sorry to hear we steered you wrong about the mineral deposits, but glad you got it unclogged!
posted by aimedwander at 6:41 AM on November 18, 2014