Your other option (or one of them) is to gently pulse your coils and use a q-tip dipped in alcohol. The combination of the two (after I rinse in water gently first) seems to work well without overheating the coil (I use SS so I tend to not want to just dry burn only). If you are worried about the posts, you don't have to use running water. A wire brush can be helpful as well (or a toothbrush). I mainly use q-tips to swab out any "major" gunk remaining, but it would be a way of cleaning it some before pulsing/dry burning if you are worried about an immersion.
I do this on my ohm's meter, usually. It's a $12 item, if I accidentally get it wet (I almost never do) I'm talking about replacing an ohms meter, not one of my expensive mods. I'm pretty stingy with the water in any case, to begin with....
Anna