The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker can do a lot of things, but unfortunately, it can’t clean or descale itself. That’s where you come in, coffee-lover! Unless you enjoy drinking terrible-tasting coffee, it’s recommended that you clean your carafe with soap and water after every use, that you deep-clean your machine monthly, and that you descale the entire setup every three to six months. So what’s the difference between cleaning and descaling, and how does having a smart coffee maker make things easier?  

Here’s why descaling is different 

As delicious as your favorite coffee beans are, that batch of java brewing in your carafe is mostly composed of water. Naturally, water contains minerals like calcium, magnesium, and lime—which can build up over time and give your coffee a bitter taste. The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker is an incredible piece of technology and your new, early-morning best friend, so you’ll want to take care of it. If you don’t occasionally descale, allowing too much mineral build-up to clog the water flow, the coffee maker won’t work at all.

Citrus and vinegar: recipes for success 

The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker is already cost-saving and eco-friendly with its reusable, permanent filter and other features. Descale using natural ingredients to keep on the same path. Commercial products do work well to remove the buildup in your coffee maker, but you can make your own descaling solutions using common household ingredients: 

1. Vinegar is a pantry staple! It’s great for cleaning in general. For descaling your coffee maker, it’s acidic enough to dissolve mineral buildup and won’t leave a chemical residue. It’s not as strong as commercial descaling solutions, so you may need to repeat the process a couple of times. But you’ll love the simplicity of this recipe, which is half vinegar, half water.  
2. Lemon juice is also commonly used to descale machines, but there isn’t another solution out there that smells quite as good. Lemon juice isn’t nearly as acidic as commercial solutions, so you may need to repeat the descaling process more than a few times. The positive to that is a lovely, lemon-fresh scented house! This is also a simple solution of equal parts lemon juice and water.

Let your phone do most of the work for you

Once you make your solution, it’s time to descale your machine! The good news is, with the Atomi Smart Coffee Maker, you can use the accompanying app on your phone, or Alexa or Google Assistant to do most of the work for you. Basically, to descale a coffee maker, all you’re doing is pouring the solution into the machine as if you were making coffee. Then, you start a brew cycle, stop it midway through the cycle, start it again to completion, and repeat as many times as needed. This otherwise time-intensive process is made a lot easier with the smart app and voice command. You won’t have to stand over the coffee maker to manually stop and start it over and over again. 

Hopefully, this blog has demystified the art of descaling your coffee maker. It’s a necessary and sanitary thing to do to keep your coffee tasting its best, and your coffee maker operating as efficiently as possible.