Spots on Moka Pot, I suspect they are mold I have this Bialetti Moka pot for over a year. I wasn't using it very frequently until a couple of months ago. Now I use it almost every day.

I think in last December, I made coffee and forget to remove the old coffee from the funnel and noticed it after one week. I cleaned it immediately with detergent and even rubbed it with a dishwashing brush... Then I made coffee again and it smelled horrible, like I wasn't able to remove all the leftover coffee. I noticed that some coffee was actually in the filter and I put one of the hairs of the brush inside every hole to get rid of the old coffee residues. Some of them were attached to each other with mold. It was a terrible experience to clean it, it took more than one hour. Then I brewed 2-3 times and throw away the coffee I made, just to make sure everything is actually cleaned. 

I also noticed these spots at this incident. I am not sure if they were there before. I did some research on how to get rid of these spots and realised I shouldn't be cleaning the pot with soap... I don't use soap anymore. 



I don't know what these spots are. I couldn't get rid of them and I thought maybe it is just oxidation. I still use the pot and coffee tastes normal, as it should be, but rarely I still get the smell.

Is there a way to get rid of these spots? How can I make sure that they are really oxidation? Should I keep using it?
After the first instance of boiling the water in the bottom part, any mold will be dead. Using a soft brush will easily remove it. So this looks like oxidation damage.

As for the smell, the filter basket has a layer with holes in it, the underside of which is very hard to clean as you have to get to through the funnel.

However, I suspect the top part. There is a filter and a rubber seal. Remove the seal and clean the "hidden" part of the top filter as well as the the area all the way up. The rubber seal is very likely to have picked up a bad odour. This happens quite often when the moka pot  was too hot and burned the seal, making subsequent cups taste (and smell) like burnt rubber. These rubber seals are cheaply available as a replacement part.