Product Maintenance | How to Clean Your Burr Grinder
To keep your brews tasting their best, having a clean grinder is a must. Over time, grinders can develop a buildup of oil residue and leftover grounds, which can impact the flavor of your coffee. In this video, Steve demonstrates some quick and easy ways to keep your grinder at its cleanest, so you can be sure you’re getting the purest grinds possible.
Transcript
- Hey. Steve with Prima Coffee here. Today we're going to take a look at how to clean your burr grinder. So, we got a nice Baratza Virtuoso here. You want to clean your grinder periodically mainly to make sure that you're getting the best coffee flavor possible. Now coffee, as you grind it, will leave some oils left over. You'll see some grounds build up inside your grinder. And all of that is basically residue that's going to affect future brew. So if it builds up too much, you might be not getting the best coffee possible.
Full Circle Grinder Cleaner
Simple to use, just as easy as grinding coffee beans
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So, it's best to clean your grinder periodically either just doing something as simple as using a Full Circle or Grindz grinder cleaner tablets. These are just little pellets. They're food-safe. They're mostly made of edible materials. All you do is just throw these right in your grinder, grind them up like you would normal coffee. Do that once in awhile. The recommended instructions are about once a month for home grinders, but you can probably just, sort of, wait and see, you know, until you notice that maybe things aren't tasting as good as they should. So, I'm going to throw a scant cap full in here. Just grind them up real quick. And you can see they just break down like coffee would. They don't leave any residue behind. They don't have any oil. So that's why Baratza, and quite a few other manufacturers, and we at Prima Coffee recommend using that.
Now, a quick note on using organic materials, let's say, to clean your grinder. You might see tips to use rice. Grind that through your grinder to clean. Now, Baratza doesn't recommend that. And there's some concerns that, you know, maybe the starch from the rice can build up inside the grinder. Essentially, it's not made for cleaning a grinder, and you probably shouldn't use it. You'd be better off either cleaning everything by hand, or using a product like the Full Circle grinder cleaner. Now, if you need to do a little bit of a deeper clean, say, taking out your burrs and giving them a brush-down with something like the Baratza grinder brush, first thing's first, unplug your grinder.
Grinder Brush, 10"
10" length provides easy access to hard-to-reach spots
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With this model, all you have to do is unscrew the hopper. Set that aside. You have a little plastic collar there. And then you can easily take out the upper burr. Now you can see there's a tiny bit of dust built up here. If this were coffee buildup, you could take your brush, just brush out the burrs. It's good to take a vacuum too. If you have a hose attachment just vacuum out the residue after you break it up with a soft-bristle brush. Once everything's all nice and clean, set that back in, attach your little collar here, put the hopper back on, and you're good to start grinding again. It's best not to use anything moist.
You don't want to use, like a wet paper towel or a wet cloth. You don't want to build up moisture inside your grinder, especially if you have steel burrs, you definitely don't want those to rust. So just for the life of your grinder, make sure you use dry materials like a dry brush with soft bristles. Something like a vacuum is really great. It's very easy to just suck all the grounds out of your grinding chamber. And use something that's designed and essentially approved for use with grinders if you're going to clean it out with something like Grindz. So, that's our tips on how to clean out your grinder. Thanks for watching
