The one thing that all coffee drinks will agree on is that coffee needs to be freshly made. About the only other thing that coffee drinkers will agree on is that the best coffee is made in a clean coffee maker. The pot doesn’t need to be “well seasoned.” It needs to be well cleaned after every use.

There are a great many coffee-pot-cleaning products out there on the shelves of your local supermarket or chain discount store. All of them work when they are used as directed, but you honestly do not have to buy the products in order to keep your coffee maker clean. Granted, these products do make keeping your coffee maker clean much easier and will accomplish the task much quicker but there are cheaper ways.

One of the cheaper methods for keeping your coffee maker clean so that every pot of coffee will taste great is by using baking soda. Baking soda is cheap. It is one of the least expensive items that you will find on your grocer’s shelves, and yet it does so much. Baking soda neutralizes the acidity left behind in your coffee maker after you have made a pot of coffee, enjoyed it, and then emptied the pot.

Only one teaspoon of baking soda is enough to clean the average coffee maker. Simply put a teaspoon full of baking soda into the pot, let it sit for a few minutes, and then thoroughly rinse the pot to remove all traces of the baking soda.

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One of the secrets of making really good coffee is the filter that you use in your coffee maker. The standard paper filters are abundant, and the ones that are most often used. Barring other choices, they are at least sufficient. You certainly should not ever make coffee in an automatic drip coffee maker or in a percolator without using a filter. If you do, there will be little coffee grounds floating in the pot of coffee.

If you are going to use the paper coffee filters in your coffee maker, you need to buy the ones that actually fit your coffee maker. Paper coffee filters do come in various sizes and are made for specific brands of coffee makers. The reason that it is important that the coffee filter is a perfect fit for the coffee maker is that a coffee filter that is either too large or too small for your coffee maker will allow coffee grounds to get into the coffee — not a good thing.

While paper coffee filters are the ones most often used, they are not the only choice in coffee filters. There are permanent filters for coffee makers that can be purchased. These permanent filters must be cleaned thoroughly after each and every use. Believe it or not, there is even a permanent coffee filter that is actually lined with gold!

The very best choice of all coffee filters, though, is the cloth variety. Yes, it does have to be cleaned after each use, but coffee made using paper filters has a slightly papery taste to it, and cloth filters add no taste at all to the coffee. Cloth coffee filters are available in the same sizes as paper coffee filters. They are more expensive initially, of course, but they last much longer. Cloth coffee filters are made from unbleached cotton, so they are environmentally friendly as well.

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There was a fellow that I talked to not long ago that I hadn’t seen in a good many years. The first thing that he said to me was, “I remember a cup of coffee that I had at your house about twenty years ago. It was the best cup of coffee that I have ever had in my life!” Of all the things that he could have said, that would have been my last guess. But that is exactly what he said.

There are a few basics that go into making a perfect cup of coffee. First your coffee maker must be kept clean. Making coffee time after time after time without cleaning the coffee maker will make the coffee bitter. All coffee makers must be cleaned regularly — both drip makers and percolators.

There are two ways to clean coffee makers. The first way is that after every pot of coffee, the coffee maker needs to be rinsed with a little baking soda and water. Then it needs to be rinsed several more times to be sure that the soda residue is completely rinsed away.

Occasionally, a coffee maker needs to be cleaned with cream of tarter. If you have a percolator, put a teaspoon of cream of tarter into the basket with a filter, plug it in, and let it go through the whole coffee-making cycle. If you have an automatic drip pot, put a teaspoon of cream of tarter into coffee basket with a filter, as well as a teaspoon of cream of tarter into the pot, and let it run through the entire coffee-making cycle.

Another secret to a perfect cup of coffee is that the water that you use should be of the bottled variety, unless you are blessed with really good tap water. The chlorine and other chemicals in tap water do affect the taste of coffee.

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