If it's oily then you'll need detergent too stop the build up. I made the mistake initially of treating my pot like a tea pot which is never cleaned. A clean with detergent every time you clean your grinder (every 1-2 bags of coffee) is probably enough.

In Italy washing the coffee pot with detergent is considered a sin. The "oily" that you describe gives a better taste, and it's something that every "nonna"(grandmother) teaches you, if you want to clean your coffee pot just put it under hot water and brush it with your fingers, that's it.

Source: I'm from the south of Italy, and I have Nonnas :D

I'm Italian as well, and Italy's taste for coffee is... at least questionable. Many nonnas drink coffee made with beans roasted to a char, adding a generous amount of sugar to make it palatable. See also the similar "espresso culture" [1, in Italian].

I've seen moka pots where the upper chamber is black with oily residue accumulated in years of not cleaning it to avoid this "sin". The resulting coffee is sour and bitter and generally disgusting (but again, that's what we are often drinking normally).

Part of the idea of not cleaning it is connected to the material (aluminum), which makes a protective layer of oxide which could be damaged by scrubbing; apart from the fact that using regular dish soap is not the same as scrubbing, the oxide will reform, you would need to eat a moka every 3/4 year for aluminum absorbtion to be a problem, and the whole point falls apart when using a steel moka pot.

I recommend trying out yourself in a double-blind test instead of trusting "received ideas": does the coffee after cleaning it taste better? worse? same?

[1] https://www.gamberorosso.it/notizie/caffe-bar-inchiesta/

> Italy's taste for coffee is... at least questionable.

I don't know how one can question taste... it's taste after all! It's subjective.

What I'm hearing is that you don't like bitter espresso with sugar. This is to my taste, and yet, I'm not questioning yours :)

I agree! My point being that if taste is subjective, defining something taste-related as "wrong" (washing the moka, putting pineapple on pizza, etc.) is also silly.

Do as you please, eat whatever you will, if it diverges from tradition or received knowledge and you're happy about it go ahead and enjoy!

Ah, totally agree, perhaps I misread your comment. I'm not much for prescriptive views on food and my Italian family is full of 'em ;)

Too many sins derived from Italy to keep up with

Pasta Water

I've read to never use detergent on a moka pot. But I've never tried it to find out! I find that simply using my fingers to brush it clean under warm water after each use seems to work just fine.

Yeah I just wash it with hot water. If I'm using it in the afternoon having made a morning coffee a few hours before, I'll just use my fingers. In the evening I'll clean it a bit more carefully, with a sponge or whatever I have.

Once I was curious if I was using my moka pot "wrong" so I checked some videos on YouTube and some of the people had immaculate Mokas. Like mine are clean, but these were near mirror-finish polished even though they'd been used.

Since most Moka appear to be made of aluminum, you would not want to put in a dishwasher (too caustic). But dish soap of the normal variety should not be a problem?

I put a disassembled one in the dishwasher once, there's actually a bit of lubricant on the threads that a dishwasher will clean away and it's not the same again

can vouch for this, my small Moka Pot was never the same after my mother-in-law put it through the wash

I don't think it's about damaging the metal, but how it affects the taste of subsequent brews.

Perhaps you've been advised to never wash the pot out of an abundance of caution that you might neglect to rinse it.

I recommend a bottle cleaning tablet. Removes oil and residue without leaving any perfumes from detergents behind.