Should You Put Rice Through Your Coffee Grinder to Clean It?

Jul 11, 2023

This easy hack to clean your coffee grinder is going viral—but it’s not as fool-proof as it seems.

Few things compare to the intoxicating smell of brewing coffee in the morning—whether you enjoy the taste or not. As a cornerstone to morning rituals across the country, coffee culture runs deep with fancy gadgets and equipment to make virtually anyone a barista in their own home.

One of the most annoying parts of owning kitchen equipment is having to clean it. So, when seemingly easy hacks pop up on TikTok, like cleaning coffee grinders with rice, many of us are quick to give it a try. Is cleaning your coffee grinder with rice a smart idea, though? Could it cause more harm than good? Let’s find out.

While it’s relatively easy to clean out a blade grinder, doing a full sweep of a burr grinder can require a toolbox, making it an infrequently done chore. Although commercial grinder cleaning tablets clear the dust from every nook and cranny, the costs of these can add up fast. That’s where the ingenious idea of using a pantry ingredient most of us already have on hand comes in: rice.

For many, adding uncooked rice to your burr grinder is a no-brainer because it picks up the coffee dust, residue, and oil, removing them from the grinder and leaving the machine squeaky clean with minimal manual labor. However, coffee grinders are made for grinding coffee beans, not rice granules. Many varieties of uncooked rice are harder than coffee beans and can damage your grinder, particularly burr grinders. Many grinder manufacturers don’t cover rice damage under their warranties, and these machines are typically not cheap.

While the trendy rice-cleaning hack is legitimate, choosing the right kind of rice is super important to avoid potentially costly damage to your expensive machine.

Coffee connoisseurs online have discovered that dry instant rice addresses this issue. Dry, precooked rice has softened to a brittle texture similar to coffee beans and is super effective at cleaning burr grinders without causing any damage. If you don’t want to spring for instant rice, you can make it at home by dehydrating cooked rice, although the time commitment is much steeper.

Blade grinders are usually sold at a much cheaper price point and are often used to grind hard spices, so regular uncooked rice isn’t as big of a concern in these appliances. However, instant rice is still the safer bet to get the longest shelf life out of your blade grinder,

So, should you give this viral trend a try at home? While warranty rules don’t differ between uncooked regular rice and instant rice, the instant rice shouldn’t damage your grinder. That said, if damage does occur, it probably won’t be covered under your grinder’s warranty.

To give this trick a whirl, open up the grinder and give the burr and hopper a good cleaning with a vacuum or brush to remove any exterior dust or beans. Then add about half a cup of instant dry rice to the hopper, running it through the grinder. Grab some old beans and run those through the grinder afterward to remove any trace of rice from the machine. Some users also unscrew the hopper, remove the burr and the rubber ring, and do another vacuum, brush, or wipe down with a wet cloth of those parts before reassembling and brewing.

With dry beans going into a clean coffee grinder, you might not think you need to clean it, but unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Whether it’s a blade or a burr grinder, your coffee grinder needs regular cleaning to keep the equipment in good working order, especially if it is expensive, and to maintain the quality of your morning brew.

As we grind coffee beans, dust builds up on and in the grinder (and anything else it comes into contact with, to be honest). While this dust may not seem like a big deal, the oils found in coffee beans—no matter their age—are also in this dust and can go rancid, leading to an acridly bitter final product that has nothing to do with how strong you brew your morning cup of joe.

Regarding how often you should clean your grinder, many coffee drinkers do an exterior grounds dust-off every day, a wipe down of the hopper and grind chamber every week or two, and a complete deep clean with rice every one to three months—although some wait as long as six.

The gunk that builds up in coffee grinders, burr varieties especially, is no joke. It can jam up the system completely if not regularly addressed. Regular cleaning ensures your machine stays in tip-top shape and every cup you brew tastes fantastic.