It can be tricky to figure out how to clean your Keurig, but it’s important work. If your household is like mine, your pod coffee maker runs anywhere from three to seven times per day. All of that use can cause buildup and gunk, which can affect the taste of your coffee and the lifespan of your machine. But with proper maintenance and a dedicated routine, cleaning is a breeze. Here’s everything you need to know about light daily cleaning as well as deeper cleans.

Be sure to check out our related buying guides, including the Best Pod Coffee Makers, the Best Coffee Machines, the Best Coffee Subscriptions, and the Best Milk Frothers.

Daily Maintenance

To clean the housing of your Keurig coffee maker or other pod machine, just take a damp cloth and wipe down the outside. You can clean the K-Cup holder and needle by brushing or vacuuming away any loose debris like coffee grounds—be careful near the needle part since, obviously, it’s sharp.

Some machines come with a needle cleaning tool that you insert into the top and bottom of the needle, and a few people on various forums have used a paper clip instead. Some machines have removable pod holders that can be soaked in hot water. It’s always a good idea to refer to your specific model’s user guide, and you’ll probably want to unplug your machine beforehand.

To clean your drip tray and water reservoir, remove them and wash them by hand with hot, soapy water (though avoid using too much dish soap to prevent buildup). If your machine came with a carafe, wash it by hand or pop it in the dishwasher if it’s dishwasher-safe. Let them air dry or wipe them down with a lint-free towel after rinsing them off. You should be replacing the fresh water in your reservoir often, especially if it’s been sitting for a while. If your machine has a water filter in its reservoir, replace it every two to three months. Most machines with these types of filters have maintenance reminders—heed them!

For cleaning out the internal bits and pieces, you can use something like a Keurig Rinse Pod, which helps to flush out any excess oils or flavors that might be lingering. They are especially handy after brewing with flavored K-Cups like hot cocoa or some coffee varieties. You can also just run a hot water cycle every so often, which is a particularly good idea if you haven’t used your machine for a few days.

Deeper Cleaning and Descaling

Some manufacturers recommend using filtered water or distilled water instead of tap water in your reservoirs, but I’ve always used tap water with the knowledge that I might have to clean my machine more frequently. You should deep-clean or descale your pod coffee maker every three to six months, or possibly more often if you notice hard water stains, calcium deposits, or mineral buildup, or your machine prompts you to deep-clean it.

You can do this a few ways. For the DIY method, fill your water tank with white vinegar and water (about half and half) and run large-capacity brew cycles until the reservoir is empty; Halfway through, consider letting the vinegar solution soak for a while, around 20 to 30 minutes. Follow up with a few rinsing cycles using clean water until the vinegar smell is gone. Alternatively, you can use a dedicated Keurig descaling solution according to the instructions on the bottle. That solution can be used on non-Keurig machines too. Make sure your machine is fully rinsed out before brewing your next cup of coffee.

It’s important to perform these deeper cleaning cycles on a regular basis to ensure your machine lasts as long as possible. And that your coffee tastes good, of course.

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.

Against that backdrop, Europe’s reliance on American-made AI begins to look more and more like a liability. In a worst case scenario, though experts consider the possibility remote, the US could choose to withhold access to AI services and crucial digital infrastructure. More plausibly, the Trump administration could use Europe’s dependence as leverage as the two sides continue to iron out a trade deal. “That dependency is a liability in any negotiation—and we are going to be negotiating increasingly with the US,” says Taddeo.

The European Commission, White House, and UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology did not respond to requests for comment.

To hedge against those risks, European nations have attempted to bring the production of AI onshore, through funding programs, targeted deregulation, and partnerships with academic institutions. Some efforts have focused on building competitive large language models for native European languages, like Apertus and GPT-NL.

For as long as ChatGPT or Claude continues to outperform Europe-made chatbots, though, America’s lead in AI will only grow. “These domains are very often winner-takes-all. When you have a very good platform, everybody goes there,” says Nejdl. “Not being able to produce state-of-the-art technology in this field means you will not catch up. You will always just feed the bigger players with your input, so they will get even better and you will be more behind.”

Mind the Gap

It is unclear precisely how far the UK or EU intends to take the push for “digital sovereignty,” lobbyists claim. Does sovereignty require total self-sufficiency across the sprawling AI supply chain, or only an improved capability in a narrow set of disciplines? Does it demand the exclusion of US-based providers, or only the availability of domestic alternatives? “It’s quite vague,” says Boniface de Champris, senior policy manager at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a membership organization for technology companies. “It seems to be more of a narrative at this stage.”

Neither is there broad agreement as to which policy levers to pull to create the conditions for Europe to become self-sufficient. Some European suppliers advocate for a strategy whereby European businesses would be required, or at least incentivized, to buy from homegrown AI firms—similar to China’s reported approach to its domestic processor market. Unlike grants and subsidies, such an approach would help to seed demand, argues Ying Cao, CTO at Magics Technologies, a Belgium-based outfit developing AI-specific processors for use in space. “That’s more important than simply access to capital,” says Cao. “The most important thing is that you can sell your products.” But those who advocate for open markets and deregulation claim that trying to cut out US-based AI companies risks putting domestic businesses at a disadvantage to global peers, left to choose whichever AI products suit them best. “From our perspective, sovereignty means having choice,” says de Champris.

But for all the disagreement over policy minutiae, there is a broad belief that bridging the performance gap to the American leaders remains eminently possible for even budget- and resource-constrained labs, as DeepSeek illustrated. “If I would already think we will not catch up, I would not [try],” says Nejdl. SOOFI, the open source model development project in which Nejdl is involved, intends to put out a competitive general purpose language model with roughly 100 billion parameters within the next year.

“Progress in this field will not to the larger part depend anymore on the biggest GPU clusters,” claims Nejdl. “We will be the European DeepSeek.”

In an attempt to address the complexity people often experience in dealing with government services, the UK government has unveiled CustomerFirst.

This is a new unit within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), led by Tristan Thomas, formerly of Monzo, and Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy. It aims to bring together the best civil service operators alongside leading private sector disruptors and transformation specialists. The plan is to use CustomerFirst expertise to rewire government services, making use of AI and best practices from the private sector.

The Blueprint for modern digital government report, published last year, set out six steps to achieve a digital state. At the time, the government also recognised major challenges that were preventing digital government from progressing.

Although the government spends over £26bn annually on digital technology and employs a workforce of nearly 100,000 digital and data professionals, institutionalised fragmentation is holding back digital government services. Problem areas include persistent legacy, cyber and resilience risk; siloed data; under-digitisation; inconsistent leadership; a skills shortfall; diffused buying power; and outdated funding models.

A year later, the government has published its Roadmap for a modern digital government. The roadmap states that public services are being redesigned to be quicker, more accessible and easier to use, while also being cheaper to run and costing less to the taxpayer. The roadmap includes digitisation of the planning system to accelerate house building and a goal to simplify how people manage their benefits and taxes online.

CustomerFirst is being positioned as one of the initiatives the government will use to deliver savings for taxpayers through end‑to‑end reform and smarter use of technology by departments. There is a potential £4bn saving from moving service processing online, rather than by phone, post or in-person. 

Discussing the need to streamline how people interact with government departments, the minister for digital government, Ian Murray, said: “Too often, people are put off from interacting with the services they need by the frustration that comes with waiting on hold, filling in endless forms, and jumping through hoop after hoop.”

He said the government would redesign services so they meet the demands of modern life.

Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) will be deployed to achieve this objective. Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, said: “With modern technology, including AI, and even more importantly empowered teams whose job it is to help citizens, we can improve service without increasing costs.” 

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is the first government department to work with CustomerFirst. It aims to improve how the DVLA handles millions of customer interactions each year related to driving licences, vehicle registration and other motoring services.

DSIT said the DVLA will become a blueprint for improving services across government departments. DVLA CEO Tim Moss said: “DVLA has a track record of delivering great digital services, and we are keen to build on this and further develop the next generation of high-quality services that citizens should expect.” 

As part of its roadmap for modern digital government, DSIT said it was looking for senior and experienced talent with expertise in service design, solutions architecture and product management.