Question: “Why do manufacturers put ribs inside the filter baskets? This makes them very hard to clean.” – Ron Varley

Answer: Excellent question, Ron.  Who doesn’t hate trying to clean between the ribs of a drip brewer filter basket. As we go over in the site’s section on Coffee Maintenance, you want to make sure you’ve cleaned all residue from everything that coffee touches.  Coffee is oily and attaches itself to whatever it is left on.  It is also perishable, so that even the residue will go stale in time and affect the flavor of coffee you make later on.

So why the ribs on the inside of the filter baskets?  To figure it out, I found myself looking at all kinds of design patents for filter baskets and then the answer jumped off the page.  It’s not the ribs that are important, but the space between them.  As hot water passes through the coffee and filter, it needs to flow to the center of the basket to drip out into the pot.

If you used a paper filter and those ribs were not built into the basket, then it would take the coffee longer to “canal” its way to the center of the basket and drip through.  Instead, the space between ribs is the area where brewed coffee travels from the filter through to the drip-hole, and into the pot. I’m not an engineer and sometimes lousy at explaining these types of things, so I hope that makes sense.

My advice on cleaning it is to rinse it as soon as possible right after the coffee is brewed.  That way, none of the residue will set.  Otherwise, a dish-cleaning sponge will get into ribs to clean them out better than a cloth. A dish brush is best of all. I confess that since I use a mesh filter instead of paper filters that I don’t clean the filter basket as often as I should.  So it is probably collecting residue from the previous pots I’ve brewed and leaving me with less than optimal coffee flavor.  Something to remember, so thanks again for the question.

Question: “My sister’s coffee always smells and tastes like tin. No matter what she does. I have recently started using my daughter’s coffee pot and find the same thing happening to me. Is it the pot or are we doing something wrong?  Thank you very much.” - Donna

Answer:
Hi Donna,  Thanks for the question.  I’ll try to narrow it down by pointing out three different possibilities and some remedy for each.

The Machine: Give the coffee machine a cycle of one part vinegar, two parts water.  Vinegar has a non-toxic cleaning power that may clean the metallic flavor out of the system.  Then, run a couple water-only cycles to rinse the vinegar out.  You will either notice an improvement or nothing at all.  If you don’t notice a difference, move on to the next steps.  If you do notice an improvement, run one or two more vinegar-water cycles, we’ve isolated the problem.

Read: Vinegar Cleaning the Coffee Machine

Water: More than likely, it’s the water that’s the culprit.  I’ve even heard stories of cities changing some piping, causing the water to have a metallic tinge to it (at least in the short term).  Use filtered water instead of filling the coffee pot from the tap.  There are alot of minerals in tap water that could stand to be filtered out before you drink it, and coffee is 99% water.  I suggest buying a Brita pitcher for your fridge.

Read: Does the Coffee Maker Purify My Water?
Read: Why Water is So Important to Coffee

The Filter: This is the least likely culprit, but worth trying for good measure.  Try using a paper filter, if you haven’t already.  The mesh “perma-filters” will not cause a metallic taste in the coffee, but paper will pick up more from the coffee before it drips into the pot so you may find that it helps.

Read: Paper Versus Mesh Filter…fight!

When I first read your question, it sounded like the coffee pot itself was the constant.  If it’s a steel pot, it’s possibly to blame.  In this case, you may consider buying a universal glass pot.  If your daughter’s pot is glass, then it wouldn’t cause the metallic taste.

Everybody deserves great-tasting coffee, and no food or drink tastes good with something metallic in it.  I hope these suggestions help you get back to drinking great coffee.

It’s a travesty.  While I might be anxious to get through this coffee overstock, there was nothing good about what happened this week.  I was excited to finally break open a pound of Kenya AA coffee bought for me by a friend.  He had bought it for me over a month ago so naturally I was concerned about how fresh it would be.  A few weeks ago, I vacuum-sealed it in the hopes that it would hold some freshness.  Coffee are like cigars to me in that way, a slightly stale quality cigar can still be better than a fresh low-grade cigar.  With coffee, flavor comes from freshness.  The more fresh the coffee, the more flavor in the cup.


The travesty is that not only did I have to throw out this pound of coffee, but Kenyan coffee is one of my all-time favorites.  Kenyan coffee is sold at state-run auctions in Kenya, and the AA grade means it’s Kenya’s finest.  It was the worst coffee since I had to drink cafeteria coffee last year.  Don’t let it happen to you.  Let’s look at how you lose flavor in coffee.

Flavor = freshness.  And there are four enemies to coffee freshness: they are oxygen, moisture, heat, and light.  The point is not to allocate blame, but to decide what both the roaster and I might have done wrong that took all the flavor out of what should have been a great coffee.

Oxygen
The most common enemy: air.  Exposure to air is inevitable and very little is truly air-sealed.  I had this coffee a while after it was bought so I have to take responsibility for not getting to it fast enough.  Having said that, the roaster did not indicate on the bag how recently it was roasted and I was surprised how little flavor it had left, even if I sat on it for a month.  Choose a roaster that indicates how recently the beans were roasted so you know how long they’ve been expiring.  Peet’s Coffee and Tea indicates on the bag on what exact date the beans were roasted.

Moisture
When beans are done roasting, the roaster has to cool them down.  Otherwise, they will continue to roast on their own from the heat in the bean’s interior.  Make sure your roaster does not use a liquid technique to cool down the beans.  This moisture will also sap freshness from the bean.  This is also a concern if you freeze your coffee, which causes moisture once the beans are removed from the freezer and thawed.

Heat and light
I lump these two together as secondary possible causes.  Oxygen exposure is likely the biggest cause by both the roaster who did not package and sell these beans quickly enough after they were roasted, as well as the time they spent on my shelf before I got to them.  Moisture exposure is another possible defect in the roaster’s process.  But heat is more of a concern during the brewing process, and certainly, you don’t want to let your coffee sit on heat for too long before it’s poured and enjoyed.  Light can also take away from coffee bean freshness, so it’s suggested you store your beans in a cupboard, which I had done so this isn’t likely what I did to cause the beans to lose freshness.

It is a very real possibility that the roaster overheated the beans, possibly not cooling them at all after they were roasted, so heat exposure could have been a cause.