Rice can be used to thoroughly clean your coffee grinder. According to Real Simple, running a bunch of rice through your coffee grinder will give you a cleaner cup of coffee. Anybody out there ever tried this life hack? Do you have any other tips about how to give your coffee grinder a great clean? Please share your insights in the comments.
Mill a handful of grains and the fine particles will absorb stale odors and clean out residual grounds and oil. Discard rice and wipe clean.
Scour Your Coffee Grinder with Rice – [Real Simple]

















Hi There
Cooked or uncooked rice? the pic shows cooked
Cheers
billyk
Uncooked rice only(!) Can you imagine the mess milling with claggy cooked rice?
I actually didnt find this too useful. Even after wiping there is a good amount of rice flour that persisted and the next batch of coffee grounds will should be seen as a clean too, and disposed.
With my handheld unit I find it cleans itself quite well if you invert right at the end of milling then give it a few firm taps with one hand. There is minimal material remaining and I never notice the old, stale coffee smell.
I use rice to clean my burr grinder and it works well. I find I have run two lots through. The first cleans out the worst of the oils and residue and the second cleans out what is left behind. I then run a batch of throw-away coffee beans through to remove the rice dust.
I use my coffee grinder as a spice grinder, and I find that rice is great for removing spices and their oils. I wipe out the grinder with kitchen paper, then grind 1 to 2 teaspoons of rice, tip it out, wipe again, then grind a second batch of rice if I want it really clean.
My dad taught me to clean my coffee grinder with bread – tear up a slice, grind it to breadcrumbs, tip it out and repeat for a clean grinder. You may need to just dust out the last crumbs with a piece of kitchen paper if your grinder has an awkward crevice near the blade like mine does. I guess it works similarly to rice, but doesn’t leave lots of dust in the grinder. It’s great for getting rid of the spices smell as well – glad to see I’m not the only one for whom a coffee grinder is a multitasking kitchen gadget!
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I have done this a few times and it is effective. As stated, run the rice through twice and then throw away the first coffee run-through. After that, it’s all-good :)
Sweet! Just what I needed.
We use plain white sugar to clean our grinders. It works great, absorbs the coffee oils (preventing them from going stale in the grinder) and does not impart any taste to the coffee. The Gaggia burr grinders, we send out every 6 months for cleaning and adjustment.
I just tried this and my mill came out as clean as the day I bought it.
Will this technique work for cleaning the grinder in an automatic espresso machine? I would love to be able to use this as an easy way to clean the grinder after grinding my coffee beans.
I am going to give this method a try. I will let you know the results. 4-22-2009 MI
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Tried this and it killed my grinder. Found out later that you must set your grinder to medium or coarse.
Parboiled rice. Remember this. Parboiled rice! Its not quite as hard on the burrs from all Ive heard.
Thank you so much! I used uncooked rice to clean my automatic delonghi espresso machine and it worked great! I