What Happens If You Try To Brew Instant Coffee In Your Drip Maker

Bleary-eyed, you stumble into the kitchen ready to get the day started, and realize you've dumped instant coffee crystals into your coffee machine. As tempting as it might be to press the brew button anyway, you may want to refrain. Sending instant coffee through the inner workings of your drip coffee maker can turn the guts of the machine into a slog-like mess, ultimately impacting the taste of your next coffee brewed from flavorful freshly ground coffee beans.

Give yourself a pass and dump out those bits of instant coffee before any hot water comes into contact with your morning mistake. You'll have less cleaning up to do after the first cup of caffeine has hit your system, and you can thank yourself once you're feeling a bit more alert. If you don't happen to have ground-up beans to place into your machine yet are desperately craving that early cup of morning Joe, place instant coffee in the machine's glass carafe rather than the filter basket to save it from potential strife.

As nice and convenient as it might sound to give your instant coffee a gourmet enhancement by brewing it through your coffee machine, stick to the good old-fashioned approach of stirring hot water into a mug. Instant coffee is simply dried coffee, so once hot water is added to your favorite cup, those small crystals of coffee will dissolve upon contact. A machine may not be as effective in this instance.

Coffee makers are meant to slowly drip hot water through ground beans to brew coffee. When applied to instant coffee, this slow drip technique could result in an uneven dispersal of water through the coffee crystals you've slipped into the machine, and you may be left with bits of dried coffee chunks in the filter of your brewer. Instant coffee also dissolves best when it's stirred — something that your drip coffee maker can't do. So, save your machine for your next batch of premium coffee beans, instead, and keep the instant coffee powder in your cup.