when your coffee tastes like poison, you should...

probably clean it.

So, I've had this little, cheap Mr. Coffee for at least 4 years now. I've never cleaned it (gross, i know). Well my coffee was taking progressively worse. Eventually it started to taste like poison OR death causing chemicals.

Well, apparently you are supposed to clean your coffee maker once a month (who knew) to get rid of the coffee bean oils. Here's all you gotta do:

How to clean your coffee maker
Make a mixture of 1 part water to 1 part vinegar. (I only had apple cider vinegar, so I used that...and it turned out fine!). Since I have a 4 cup coffee maker, I used 1 1/2 cups of water and 1 1/2 cups of cider vinegar.

Put a coffee filter in the machine, just like normal.

Pour the vinegar mixture where you normally pour the water. (I have a fun story about this. See below...)

Turn on the coffee maker, press brew, and let the mixture run completely through.

Throw out the filter and the brewed mixture.

Repeat 2 times with plain cold water.

Clean as a whistle.

A fun story about my coffee maker (as promised)
As most of you know, I worked at Starbucks for quite a long time. And as most of you know, Starbucks sells coffee. By now you should have deduced that while at Starbucks, I made coffee...a lot of it. You would think I would be quite good at it. I thought I was quite good at it.

Unfortunately, the first time I made coffee in my Mr. Coffee, I put my filter in, put my grinds in and pressed brew After a few seconds, the coffee maker started to make this weird, chemical, burning smell! I failed to add water!

At Starbucks, we don't have to add water when we brew coffee. The coffee brewers are hooked up to the water, so it automatically dispenses...which means, I didn't know I had to add water to my own machine! Oops...