Forever waiting for coffee

by Felonious
(Passaic County, NJ )

QUESTION:

Why does my coffee pot take so long to brew? It has gotten worse over the years, now it's up to 40 minutes for 10 cups! The maker of the drip coffee pot is DeLonghi. Could it be that the very hard well water we have is clogging up the inner workings?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much.

ANSWER:

You're right on both counts. First, it should never be taking that long to brew your coffee. That's a crazy length of time.

And yes, if you have hard well water you can be sure that the water lines in your coffee maker have been clogging up.

The problem you describe happens to a lot of people, many of whom don't have water as hard as yours. Coffee makers seem quite susceptible to the build-up of scale, particularly drip brewers which have fine-bore nozzles to spray hot water over the ground coffee.

The answer? Probably the easiest thing to do is go down to your local hardware store and look for a household descaling product.

Follow the instructions on the product but repeat a few times. And then be sure to run cold water through the system a few times to thoroughly rinse it before you make coffee again.