Clean Out Your Coffee Grinder

     First of all, my sincere apologies for no blog activity for the last many weeks.  I haven't posted since CoffeeCON, and I still have much to write about that amazing trip and show.The great news is that my time has been occupied with good reason.  I am about to unveil a new look for MakeGoodCoffee.com, complete with new functionality to help match you with the right coffee for you, and exciting new content.  Stay tuned!  Alot of exciting development coming up.Part of the relaunch of the site involved some photo shoots of yours truly in the coffee bar doing what I do best, making coffee.  I was fortunate to have a photographer that knew coffee well.  When she asked me to clean my coffee grinder so that she could capture a picture of it, I looked at her dumbfounded and embarrassed.  [ad#Google Adsense - use me]I had never cleaned my coffee grinder before.  I use the Cuisinart Burr Grinder that you see pictured above, and I do occasionally clean the second chamber of the grinder that captures the ground coffee.  Ground coffee shoots into that chamber so quickly that some of it collects and cakes up.  Occasionally, I clean that out.     When I asked the photographer what she thought I could use to clean the inside of the grinder, she asked if I had a brush of any kind.  I found a thin, flat unused paint brush - the kind you see pictured to the left.When I put my face into the grinder to begin to brush it out, I immediately recognized the smell of stale coffee.  Coffee that had remained in the grinder was going stale from not cleaning it.  Some of that stale coffee was certainly ending up in the coffee that I ground.Find yourself a brush of pretty much any kind.  Every now and then, clean out your grinder.  Good coffee is about fresh coffee, and if you don't keep the system clean, you've got stale coffee in it.