I have seen two mentions of coffee pot maggots in the last week. Call it "red car syndrome" but suddenly it's as if everywhere I turn, I see another story about maggots in coffee pots.
I never even knew this was possible until I watched a recent episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive." The woman featured on the show had three coffee pots because, to quote her son, "you get maggots in the coffee pots, and it's easier to just buy a new one than to clean the old one."
The second time I encountered this phenomena was in a recent article on The Consumerist. Hooray, a McDonalds store announced that it no longer has maggots in its coffee pot! It seems that the store's coffee maker had been smelling worse and worse and worse. And finally they opened it up and found that it was full of maggots.
First of all, I still don't fully understand where the maggots are living in these cases. It must be in the water reservoir, because that's the only place that doesn't get wicked hot during the pot's operation. But then again you would think it was in the grounds, because there's nothing else for a maggot to eat in a coffee pot. But don't the grounds get changed? Wouldn't you just be throwing out the maggots every time you made a new pot, and thus there would be no chance for maggots to build up?
People, it's time we had a talk. This is an even better reason to clean your coffee pot properly once a month. I mean, sure, there's that whole thing about the build-up of scale and other mineral deposits which makes your coffee pot run more slowly until eventually it clogs altogether. There's that. But I think we can all agree that the possibility of a maggot infestation is much more vivid.
Every month, fill your coffee maker's reservoir with a 50/50 mixture of water and white vinegar. Empty the filter basket, and run it just as if you were making a pot of coffee, but without the coffee grounds. After you make a piping hot pot of vinegar water, you will want to flush out the vinegar with a few rounds of fresh water. I usually find that three pots of hot water is enough to get the vinegar smell out.
I'm going to lay some tough love on you here. If there are maggots in your coffee maker, then something has gone very wrong. Either with your business and its procedures (in the case of that McDonalds) or with your home (in the case of hoarders and the squalid conditions therein).
I went looking around online and surprisingly found several stories of coffee pot maggots. One of these was from someone who had forgotten to empty the filter basket before she left on vacation - she came home to a crop of coffee pot maggots. That's understandable. But if you encounter maggots in your coffee part during your day-to-day life, then you have a serious problem, and you need to get help. No fooling.
I never even knew this was possible until I watched a recent episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive." The woman featured on the show had three coffee pots because, to quote her son, "you get maggots in the coffee pots, and it's easier to just buy a new one than to clean the old one."
The second time I encountered this phenomena was in a recent article on The Consumerist. Hooray, a McDonalds store announced that it no longer has maggots in its coffee pot! It seems that the store's coffee maker had been smelling worse and worse and worse. And finally they opened it up and found that it was full of maggots.
First of all, I still don't fully understand where the maggots are living in these cases. It must be in the water reservoir, because that's the only place that doesn't get wicked hot during the pot's operation. But then again you would think it was in the grounds, because there's nothing else for a maggot to eat in a coffee pot. But don't the grounds get changed? Wouldn't you just be throwing out the maggots every time you made a new pot, and thus there would be no chance for maggots to build up?
People, it's time we had a talk. This is an even better reason to clean your coffee pot properly once a month. I mean, sure, there's that whole thing about the build-up of scale and other mineral deposits which makes your coffee pot run more slowly until eventually it clogs altogether. There's that. But I think we can all agree that the possibility of a maggot infestation is much more vivid.
Every month, fill your coffee maker's reservoir with a 50/50 mixture of water and white vinegar. Empty the filter basket, and run it just as if you were making a pot of coffee, but without the coffee grounds. After you make a piping hot pot of vinegar water, you will want to flush out the vinegar with a few rounds of fresh water. I usually find that three pots of hot water is enough to get the vinegar smell out.
I'm going to lay some tough love on you here. If there are maggots in your coffee maker, then something has gone very wrong. Either with your business and its procedures (in the case of that McDonalds) or with your home (in the case of hoarders and the squalid conditions therein).
I went looking around online and surprisingly found several stories of coffee pot maggots. One of these was from someone who had forgotten to empty the filter basket before she left on vacation - she came home to a crop of coffee pot maggots. That's understandable. But if you encounter maggots in your coffee part during your day-to-day life, then you have a serious problem, and you need to get help. No fooling.
Photo credit of maggot-free coffee maker: Flickr/dcdan