How to Clean and Maintain your gleichdick. Grinder
If you were wondering how you should clean your gleichdick. Grinder this guide will definitely help you.
How you shouldn’t clean you gleichdick. Grinder
First things first. There are two ways of popular cleaning methods which could damage your Grinder and should be avoided:
- The dishwasher and
- Ultrasonic cleaning devices
These two types of cleaning should generally be avoided if you want to clean anodized aluminium.
The right way to clean your gleichdick Grinder
Preliminary Cleansing
Take a blunt object such as a wooden spatula or a blunt slotted screwdriver and scrape most of the resin out of the chambers. Be gentle, especially when using a screwdriver. The cleaning tool should be bolt to ensure that you are gliding on the surface and the danger of damaging the anodized outer layer is minimized. Some before and after pictures of the preliminary cleansing part are shown in the gallery below.
The Milky Way
We recommend cleaning with milk. It is important that the milk got a high fat content, since the fat in the milk dissolves the resin very well. Use enough Milk that every part of the grinder will be covered by the milk. Warm up the milk to the point where no milk skin develops. Milk develops its skin at about 70°C / 155 °F. If you didn’t catch the point it’s no problem, just skim off the skin as shown in the gallery.
When the milk is heated move the pot away from the stove and put your grinder in it. Once the milk has cooled down, remove the grinderparts from the pot and clean them with a toothbrush. Afterwards rinse the grinder with warm water and eventually clean it a little further with the toothbrush.
Let the parts try after wiping them with a towel. The advantage of cleaning with milk is that the containing fat leaves the grinder parts a little oily , which ensures a smooth gliding. What you do with the leftover milk is up to you.
The Alcohol Method
Many people like to use alcohol such as isopropanol to clean the grinder. Basically it works just as well as with milk. You put the previously roughly cleaned grinder in the alcohol and leave the herb grinder in it for a while. Then clean the grinder again with warm water and a brush.
We still recommend the milk variant, because the alcohol makes the surface completely grease-free and the grinder then tends to stick faster.
The Fast Clean Up
If you only want to clean up the outside of your grinder, simply wipe the sliding surfaces and the outer surfaces with alcohol to remove any sticky residue. Then take kitchen paper and drip some oil on it and wipe all said surfaces once with it. We recommend 'Ballistol Universalöl', but cooking oil should also do the job. Finally, wipe all oiled surfaces with a dry cloth and your grinder will feel like new again.
What to do with a wooden Grinder?
Since our wooden grinder should not be soaked in alcohol or milk, we recommend only rough cleaning as described above. Otherwise, you can use a cotton swab soaked in alcohol to help a little to det rid of the residue.