How I Fixed My Bonavita Coffee Maker
Bonavita is one of the go-to brands for upmarket coffee makers. They clock in at a fairly affordable price, yet authorities, such as Wirecutter, have said they made the best coffee of any of the machines they tested (interesting article about the company).
Bonavita has made 3 main versions…a 5-cup model, an 8-cup model, and an update to the 8-cup. I have the first 8-cup, the BV 1900ts, which I picked up used at a really good price. Overall, it has made great coffee, and it is dead simple to use, but there are a couple of downsides. First, as with any thermal carafe, it can be annoying to try to get all the coffee out. Nothing we can do about that.
The second major downside, is that it quickly developed a habit of shutting off mid-brew, which kills the workflow, and adds a weird second bloom if you have it on the bloom setting. I suspect that the previous owner grew frustrated with this stalling and that’s why they were willing to get rid of it so cheap ($10 if I recall correctly). This is a very common problem with this brewer. Start googling “bonavita coffee maker stops” and it autofills to “halfway” because so many people have had the problem.
Online searches suggest descaling as the primary solution to this problem, which I tried many times. Sometimes, I would find that it would work well once descaled, but it always began stalling again within a day or two.
After finding this solution, I have now used it for ten brew cycles with no stalls! [UPDATE: 10 more weeks of daily use and no stalls! See further updates at the end.] Here is what happened:
I actually had given up and bought another coffee maker (the OXO 8-cup), which performed adequately, but the coffee wasn’t quite as good. I decided to use the time I had with the new maker to see if there was anything at all I could do to pull apart and fix the Bonavita. In searching online, I found a video on Youtube that suggested you could fix any coffeemaker by opening it up and cleaning out the innards. Given that the Bonavita was pretty much worthless at this point, I gave it a shot. The exact components are a bit different inside, but overall pretty similar.
1) Take the bottom off
There were 5 small Phillips head screws and 3 screws with a tricky triangle top. Years ago, I bought a special bit set and was able to find one that worked. You can find these at Home Depot or online under “security bit set.” Go to a hardware store and look for a triangle bit in the set.
2) Get the tube with the ball-valve off
Inside the coffee maker, water goes into this tube from the reservoir and connects to the bottom of the heating element through a curved section with an internal spring to prevent kinking. In the picture at right, the water flows from the bottom of the picture towards the center of the picture. The black plastic diamond shape is the bottom of the heating element. Once the water is heated, it can’t go back through the one-way valve, so it continues through the heating element to a metal tube which leads to the showerhead.
My tube was really gunked up which was the cause of the stalling.
This ball-valve tube connects at both ends to plastic pieces that slide inside and is held on by spring clamps. Start by squeezing the tabs of the spring clamps and sliding them onto the tube. Then push the part of the tube that is on the clamp with a screwdriver while pulling on the tube itself. I could not pull the tube off, but a little loosening with a screwdriver made it pop off easily (see photo at right).
The other end of the tube connects pretty deep inside the machine, and I had to remove the whole heating element to be able to loosen that connection. This was just Philips-head screws again. You also should pull off the top of the machine and loosen the end of the metal tube, which sits in a rubber gasket. That way, you can pull the heating element out and get at the other end of the ball-valve tube.
3. Clean the valve tube and any other connecting tubes
For this, I used paper towels and a fondue fork. You can use another thin metal item to wipe a paper towel around the inside. Be sure to remove the spring, clean the tube, then return the spring. I believe the spring is necessary to prevent kinking, but probably leads to a lot of the build-up. Here is my dirty tube and my clean tube (photos at right). After that I cleaned the tubes that went from the heating element to the showerhead. They were not as messy as this tube, but they had some gunk in there as well. I could not really get at the heating element itself, so that is an unknown.
4. Open up the shower head and clean it out
If you open up the top of the Bonavita, you will see the showerhead. It comes out just by popping out. When I opened mine up, it had little rocks and some squishy blobs inside. Pretty gnarly. I scrubbed it out and put it back together.
5. Re-attach everything
Put the tubes back together and put the spring clips on, then screw everything back on.
6. Run a descale
There are numerous commercial powders that you dissolve into water and then run a brewing cycle. Then you run a brew with only water.
I used Breville’s descaling powder, but any product such Dezcal would work. My little local country market had two or three options last time I was there. You can also use white vinegar diluted with an equal amount of water. Some people think this leaves some residual vinegar flavor, though that is not my experience.
After my descale, my machine was good to go and we haven’t had any stalled brews. I will update this if that changes!
Originally written 1/15/23
Update 2/28/23: Still going strong. No issues.
3/23/23 Still great!
If this worked for you, I would love to hear from you! Contact form is below.
6/13/23
The past month has been a little rocky. I did another complete cleaning, but now occasionally have stalling issues. It’s a bit unclear. The only thing I cannot clean is the heating element. If anyone knows of a way to replace the element, I am open to it!
Most of the website has to do with sport psychology. However, I have written a lot about coffee within this space and have a 2 question quiz, called the Coffee Matrix, to find the perfect coffee maker for you. My original plan was to monetize the recommendations, but I have not done that yet.