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.

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The mass roll-out of fibre networks is seen as the key to the expansion of digital services across major economies, but research from Kearney is warning that a €174bn funding shortfall facing Europe’s telecoms sector is putting 2030 gigabit and 5G connectivity targets at risk, meaning around 45 million Europeans could remain without adequate high-speed connectivity by the end of the decade.

In the European telecom health index, Kearney surveyed 20,000 consumers across 21 European countries using consumer research and commercial performance data.

Topline findings showed customer behaviour was a major barrier to monetisation, with weaker markets seeing higher switching, lower satisfaction and weaker bundling. Looking at successful territories, the survey showed that the leading countries are achieving take-up of up to 84% while fibre investments struggle in slow-adopter markets.

Kearney’s research shows Europe’s healthiest telecom markets are concentrated in the north, with Norway (82), Sweden (81) and Switzerland (76) leading the rankings. These countries typically combined strong fibre adoption, higher customer satisfaction and stronger commercial outcomes.

Specifically, in slow-adopter markets – Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland and Denmark – returns on capital employed have dropped to 6%, with fibre take-up closer to 45%. By contrast, high-performing markets such as Sweden, Norway, France, Spain and Portugal are achieving fibre take-up of up to 84%, supporting significantly stronger returns of 11%.

Assessing the reasons for lack of uptake in the laggard countries, Kearney’s report found that demand-side behaviour was the main barrier to fibre monetisation. In the bottom-five markets, including the UK, customers were 7% more likely to switch providers, 10% more likely to demand faster speeds, and 6% more likely to demand better customer service compared with those in stronger markets.

By contrast, the top-five countries – Sweden, Norway, France, Spain and Portugal – record significantly higher sentiment. Customers are 11% more satisfied with their mobile provider, 13% more satisfied with fixed broadband, and 13% more likely to hold multiple mobile subscriptions with the same provider. Stronger customer relationships also deliver better financial outcomes. In top-performing markets, operators typically saw average revenue per user rise by up to 15%, while customer turnover drops by 10-15%.

The UK ranked 18th out of 20 European markets, despite fibre reaching nearly 80% of homes across the nation. The report stressed that the UK still struggles with slow adoption and weaker customer sentiment, reflected in lower bundling levels of just 28%. The UK joins Belgium and Italy in the lowest-performing group – markets where fibre availability was growing, but commercial performance is failing to keep pace.

Kearney partner Christophe Firth noted that while there was no shortage of fibre in the ground, the returns for providers weren’t adding up, and that the challenge now would be to convert homes passed into paying customers, improving service experiences and rethinking how operators go to market.

“In some countries, operators have passed 90% of homes but connected fewer than 40% – that’s a massive commercial gap that needs to be addressed,” he said.

“Instead of chasing roll-out targets, operators need to focus on actually getting more consumers to sign up to the service. That means improving how they cross-sell fixed and mobile, creating bundles that genuinely appeal to households, making digital sign-up simpler, and targeting the right customers with the right offers. The infrastructure is already there – now, it’s about turning it into a consistent revenue stream.”

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.”