How To: Adjust the Beater to Bowl Clearance on KitchenAid Stand Mixers

If your KitchenAid® stand mixer isn’t reaching all the ingredients in the bottom of the bowl, or your flat beater is scraping the bottom, these are clues that the beater to bowl clearance needs to be adjusted. To get the correct clearance, use this time-honored method we call “The Dime Test.”

A dime is one sixteenth of an inch in thickness: the ideal clearance height from beater to bowl. This provides us a visual aid. Attach a flat beater to your mixer and drop the dime into a bowl.

If the dime does not move, then the beater is too high. If the dime moves around continuously, the beater is too low. If the dime is traveling around the bowl, moving about a quarter to a half an inch with each pass of the beater, that means the beater to bowl clearance is correct.

To make the adjustment, raise your stand mixer’s tilt-head. In the hinge where the head and the body of the mixer connect, there will be a large screw. Turn it a quarter turn to the right to lower the beater, or to the left to raise it. On bowl-lift stand mixer models, this screw can be found on the stand mixer’s body behind where the bowl sits, in between the locking arms.

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