Sometimes a cup of coffee doesn't taste right. The usual answer is to dose it with a lot of cream and sugar and block the taste. However, coffee should be a rich and satisfying drink without adding anything to it. Eight reasons why your coffee may not taste good are:
1. Water
98% of a cup of coffee is water. Coffee brewed with chlorine or other hard chemicals will be flat and have a bitter, harsh taste. Make sure your water comes from either a high quality filter or quality bottled water.
2. Water Filter
Your water filter will change the taste. High quality filters take out chlorine, other chemicals, odors and algae. Low quality filters leave some chemicals and other material in the water. Dirty filters add a moldy taste to coffee. Check to make sure your filter is taking out everything that might make your coffee taste bad.
3. Temperature
Great coffee is brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Check the water going into your automatic drip brew basket with a meat thermometer. Brewing below 195 degrees creates a thin and sour taste. Brewig over 205 degrees creates a bitter and acidic taste.
4. Grinder
Good coffee is brewed from evenly ground beans. Unevenly ground beans will over and under extract, creating sour and acidic flavors. Using a good quality conical burr grinder will improve the flavor.
5. Dirty Equipment
Coffee beans are filled with oil. When it is ground and brewed the oils adhere to the machine. If you don't clean your brewer, grinder and coffee equipment, the oils will turn rancid and create a sour or fishy taste.
6. Cup
We serve coffee in our tasting room in ceramic cups. We found that our commercial dishwasher left a detergent film on the cups that affected the coffee taste. We now run our cups twice, once with detergent and once without. If you coffee tastes bad it may be the cup.
7. Storing
Coffee beans oxidize quickly when exposed to air. In addition, they also pick up flavors in the air e.g. onions, garlic, fuel oil etc. Ground coffee oxidizes faster than whole bean coffee, so coffee beans shouldn't be ground until just before they are used. Whole bean and ground coffee should be stored in as close to an oxygen free environment as possible. Freezing coffee helps slow down oxidation. Oxidized coffee tastes flat with little aroma and no subtle flavors.
8. Beans
If you check all of the above and your coffee still tastes bad, then you need to take a look at your beans. How long since the beans were actually on a tree? If it isn't the current crop year, you are wasting your money. How were the beans processed? If they sat on a truck after picking for more than a few hours they may have a fermented taste. Were the beans sorted and graded?
Good coffee trees have both good and bad beans. Did the processor sort out the bad beans? How were the beans stored? If they sat in a container on a tropical pier they may taste moldy. If they were stored in burlap bags they may taste like burlap. How long since they were roasted? Fresh roasted fresh coffee tastes fresh. Fresh roasted old coffee tastes old. Aging is good for wine, bad for coffee.
