How to Clean Your Keurig Coffee Maker

About two years ago my husband and I discovered the wonderful Keurig Coffee Maker. If you read my previous article "Keurig Coffee Maker - Best in Town!" on my Associated Content Page, you can learn all of the great features of this coffee maker. This article I am writing now will teach you how to care for your Keurig Coffee Maker so the life of the machine will last longer. Also, your coffee will taste even better if you take care of it properly.

The reason I feel it is so important to clean your Keurig Coffee machine properly is because I after two years of faithfully using our Keurig, to my dismay it broke. I was so upset. I couldn't believe my favorite coffee maker broke. I thought, oh great. Now we were going to have spend a few hundred dollars to replace it. I knew we were out of the one year warrantee period and there was no way it would be covered.

I called Keurig right away and explained the problem. I got a very nice customer service representative on the phone. He helped me as much as he could but we after trying a few trouble shooting ideas, he said I would have to call back tomorrow and speak to technical support. So I did. I called and spoke to Mike. Mike was able to tell from the serial number on my Keurig Coffee maker that my machine wasn't that old. He said that from what I was telling him, it sounded like the heating element was shot. I asked him why after only two years of using this machine it would break? He asked me if I cleaned it out regularly. Of course I told him no. I didn't know we were supposed to be cleaning it out regularly. He said I was supposed to rinse the machine with white distilled vinegar 3 to 4 times a year, depending on how "hard" my water was. I never did this. I didn't know I was supposed to do this. If I had cleaned it regularly with this vinegar, my machine would not have broke. Good to know.

He said that even though I was out of my warrantee period, he would replace it for no charge. I don't know why he did this but I couldn't thank him enough. He explained that I need to keep up the cleaning process to help reserve the life of my new Keurig machine. I asked him specifically how to clean it properly so my new machine wouldn't break. Here is what he said to do:

1. Fill the water reservoir tank with white distilled vinegar.
2. Turn the coffee maker on.
3. Run the brewing process without any K Cups in the coffee maker.
4. Run it until the water goes down and the blue light starts flashing to indicate low water.
5. Don't add any more vinegar.
6. Let the vinegar residue sit in the coffee maker for 4 hours.
7. After the 4th hour, rinse out the water reservoir completely.
8. Fill the water reservoir with clean water.
9. Run the brewing process without any K Cups twice through the machine.
10. Fill the water reservoir again with clean water.
11. You are ready to brew your delicious coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.

If your water is "hard" you need to clean your machine probably once a month. Mike said that it can't hurt the machine, only help it. If you take care of your Keurig Coffee maker and clean it properly and regularly, it should last you a very long time.

I still think this is the best Coffee Maker around. You can't beat their machine and your can't beat their customer service. Mike did not have to replace my old Keurig for free but he did. This is the way to keep your customers happy and in return I will keep recommending the Keurig Coffee company.