Let Your Flask Bask In Thermoclean (Thermoclean)

Member Name: Emmald

Product:	Thermoclean
Date:	17/07/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for a deep clean

Disadvantages: It could work out expensive.

Our Thermos flask is used regularly, we take it when we treat ourselves to a picnic and it is a regular visitor to our allotment.
Cleaning a Thermos flask properly can be a bit of a nightmare, the hot tea always seems to stain the inside of the flask and you can soak it until the cows come home and those stains are still there.
I have a good long handled bottle brush which does seem to cope reasonably well and I will often fill the flask with nearly boiling water and pop a Steradent tablet in and leave it to soak for a couple of hours.

Of course the major problem is that you cannot see inside of the flask, you pour in your fresh hot tea and hope for the best. I have noticed that the inner rims are one of the worst places for collecting grime.
Milton fluid is another popular flask cleaner and I have also filled my flask with hot soapy water and a drop of bleach but then you have to spend ages rinsing it out.

I first noticed Thermoclean on the shelf in Wilkinson's, two sachets of cleaner for £1,49. When I first saw it I looked and then walked on, if it was going to cost me 75p to keep cleaning my Thermos flask then that was going to be a dear job.
But after considering it again I decided to buy a couple of sachets to try out.

When I read the instructions on the packet I realised that you only needed to use Thermoclean every couple of months, the vacuum flask should stay clean in between cleans.
You use one sachet of Thermoclean to one litre of boiling water.
The process is simple really, fill the flask with boiling water and then add the appropriate amount of Thermoclean powder. You can fill the flask up to the brim, it causes no damage to the plastic seal.
Then leave the solution inside of the flask to soak for about half an hour.
Thermoclean contains no bleaching agents.

Make sure that you fill the flask right up to the rim so that the plastic seal gets soaked too, our flask took both sachets.
Of course when the flask is filled with Thermoclean you see little, the powder is getting to grips with the cleaning. You do start to see small brown flakes appear on the top of the water inside of the flask, this is the stained scale inside of the flask coming off.

After the half an hour then it is time to rinse away the Thermoclean, make doubly sure that you keep rinsing until you are sure that you have washed away all of the cleaner.As you rinse you will notice the water from the inside of the soaked flask is filled with brown bits.
Thermoclean helps to clear the flask of stains, tannin build up and odour and when you have just soaked your Thermos Flask you will notice a big difference.
I was fully aware that my Thermos flask looked and smelled clean.

The idea behind Thermoclean is excellent, if you are only going to give your Thermos Flask a deep clean once every couple of months then it is ideal.
Our flask kept clean and fresh for a few weeks then it could have benefited from another clean but as I mentioned earlier, we use the flask regularly.

If you are happy to settle for the odd deep clean then Thermoclean is a good buy, use it more often and it would become expensive.
The manufacturers also recommend using Thermoclean for soaking stained cups and saucers, cutlery, kitchen utensils and even ornaments.

I would definitely use it again for cleaning the flask and in the future I may give some of my cutlery a good soak too. Stainless steel cutlery is very prone to marking.
Even though Thermoclean suggest soaking china and ornaments in this solution this is something that I would more than likely not do, by the time you had filled a bowl with a few litres of hot water then it would take three of four sachets of cleaner so it would be far more economical to try another method.

I would happily use Thermoclean every couple of months or so, there is no doubt in my mind that it does make a big difference.

Summary: A very handy Thermos flask cleaner