Vinegar works, add two measured cups to the main wash period, if you can figure out when that occurs in the cycle sequence. Or place a large bowl in the lower rack filled with vinegar, the water spray will slosh it out as the cycle progresses.

There are also dishwasher cleaning products available at the grocery. Finish or Cascade or Lemi Shine branded, and also the original Lemi Shine booster powder (which is a citric acid formulation) can be used.

Should I do the bowl of vinegar with an empty washer with no soap and run a long hot cycle? Or can I have some dishes with DW soap?

Vinegar is an acid, detergent a base - they would cancel each other out. You can add clean dishes to a vinegar cycle. Ideally, you should add the vinegar to the main wash, which begins when the detergent dispenser pops open. Citric acid, Lemi Shine, is even better than vinegar: works as well but is more gentle on the dishwasher and doesn't stink like vinegar.

I have suffered from this as well. It's a mystery. I must have read every possible explanation on earth about smelly glasses from "use a different detergent" to "machine-washing weakend the surface structure of glass and scent molecules will attach to these microscopic cracks". It remains a mystery to me.

Alex

Thanks Alex. I think I will run just a very hot cycle of vinegar. I think I will add a cup of vinegar ever 20 mins in an empty DW. How does that sound.
Who knew... what is up with all these appliances that clean but then they need cleaning? Doesn't make sense to me.

Doesn't make sense to me either! The problem largely (but not entirely) went away when we replaced the dishwasher. 20 minutes into the cycle sounds good. Just close the detergent dispenser and when you come back 20 minutes later and the dispenser is open, dump the vinegar in.

In my opinion vinegar is not powerful enough to do much other than very light cleaning and making your dw smell like vinegar.

I really recommend the citric acid cleaners, Any citric acid cleaner. These will be strong enough to disolve any lime/calcium/detergent buildups. In some bad cases you may have to treat with citric acid twice back to back.

Try Dishwasher magic or Glisten or Finish DW cleaner. They all work great.

I think you are right. Dw smelled pretty good but after two loads i am not convinced dishes still don't have a problem. So what is a citrus cleaner? I have something from the dollar store called totally awesome orange degreaser. There is no list of ingredients, i guess i could purchase the ones listed but wanted clarification on the citrus. Thanks very much.

DO NOT USE that degreaser ! You'll be in a world of hurt.

Citrus cleaner can be different things - what you want is citric acid. You can find it with the canning stuff , or a DIY wine / beer store. Indian grocers have it sometimes and called "sour salt".

I thought that degreaser was trouble. I didn't do it. I do have the citrus acid you are speaking of, I wanted to make home made Mozzarella cheese and ordered a bottle a while back.

So how much of it?

You would be better off buying the Finish D/W cleaner or Dishwasher Magic from your local market. It's sold next to the D/W detergents and it's premeasured to the correct amount.

It says to use 125 to 250 grams for normal to heavy built-up. Like anything else, it must be dispensed durng the main wash.

Alright couldnt find my citrus stuff, going to.go.get the cleaner. Hope it does the trick.

Alright couldnt find my citrus stuff, going to.go.get the cleaner. Hope it does the trick.

Alright couldnt find my citrus stuff, going to.go.get the cleaner. Hope it does the trick.

I use a cup of vinegar in a rinse cycle after everything is done. It cleans up the glasses, etc and also keeps the inside of the dishwasher clean.

vinegar is pretty strong stuff - use it to clean out scaled up tankless water heaters.

Since these new dishwashers has multiple prewash purges add 2 ounces of liquid bleach at the start of wash (make sure it's not Splash-less or It will suds up).
The bleach will not effect the detergent during the main wash and will work well with most detergent pacs and you will notice the funk leaving all glassware.

And BTW, turn off Sanitize when using bleach to save energy, high wash temp is recommend if water heater is set between 120* to 130*.

I do this for about every load in my Kenmore since I had had this problem. If you are using Limi-shine pacs, an off smell will occur, Finish or Cascade will be OK.

Detergent in the prewash in these new machine are a wasted since the prewash is not cycled long enough for justification because of the multible purges.