Bad news coffee addicts: there’s probably a load of bacteria brewing inside your machine

So, we might want to steer clear of coffee machines in hotel rooms and the likes.

It turns out there is likely a “community of bacteria” living in them - delightful! Nasty little germs and bugs, all alive and well in coffee town. At least that's the warning that comes from a study conducted by the University of Valencia. They looked at coffee machines that had been put to good use for at least one year inside homes and communal areas. And they found some yucky results. Researchers sampled the “coffee waste reservoir” of ten different Nespresso machines and their results showed “the existence of a varied bacterial community in all machines sampled.” All were shown to carry “a moderately to high abundant” number of bacteria. The research claimed that all the machines contained a “significant bacterial diversity, with the total number of identified genera ranging from 35 to 67." “Our results show that coffee leach from standard capsule machines is a rich substrate for bacterial growth. “The presence of bacteria genera with pathogenic properties and the fast recovery of the communities after rinsing the capsule container, strongly suggest the need for frequent maintenance of the capsule container for these machines.” We also learned that cleaning out your machine with boiling water won’t do the trick to get rid of these nasty bugs, no! And there we were, assuming boiling water killed everything… Well, to stop mould and bacteria from spreading within our coffee machine, it's recommended that we clean them with vinegar too every few months… (Let’s hope that won’t leave us with a very vinegary cup of joe!)