Is cleaning my coffee carafe necessary for better tasting coffee?

[Dembadon]

We clean our equipment every Sunday, mainly for the reasons Evo mentioned. Coffee starts to taste a bit funky after a few weeks of buildup.

 

[NobodySpecial]

EDIT: Also to the poster above, instant coffee tastes ****. So no point in making it in the first place. Then you can save your 47p by not buying Tesco rubbish.

There are nice instant coffees Nescafe Gold Blend and Blend37 - but instant has such a bad rep outside the UK you can't buy them anywhere else.
They are better than 'supermarket brand' ground coffee in the USA and a lot more convenient.

 

[physics girl phd]

There are nice instant coffees Nescafe Gold Blend and Blend37 - but instant has such a bad rep outside the UK you can't buy them anywhere else.
They are better than 'supermarket brand' ground coffee in the USA and a lot more convenient.

Or just have the best of both worlds... Augment your brewed coffee with instant. But still clean the pot. The idea of gray fuzzy mold...

 

[Proton Soup]

easiest way I've found to clean coffee patina off glass is automatic dishwasher powder (which i think is mostly trisodium phosphate and a bit of chlorine bleach) and hot water. shake/swirl/sit/rinse. easy-peasy.

for calcium deposits on the water heating element of the coffee maker, i pour hot vinegar into the back of the thing where the water goes and turn it on. you get rewarded with a pot full of vinegar, calcium acetate, and calcium sand.

 

[Proton Soup]

There are nice instant coffees

this statement is false

 

[Evo]

this statement is false

I've actually had a few instants that weren't bad. They were in foil pouches, maybe that helped.

 

[Integral]

Yesterday I decided to take the next step. I added ~250ml of white vinegar to the water and ran in thorough the coffee maker. Today I actually think I tasted an improvement in our coffee. I am still not convinced that cleaning the patina out of our carafe made any difference but just maybe there were some mineral deposits in the heater mechanism which were adding something to the water.