The Correct Methods and Techniques for Brewing Coffee: What to Do When Your Coffee Tastes Too Bad?

For any coffee enthusiast, regardless of individual flavor preferences, the goal of learning to brew coffee is consistent: to make it taste good. We carefully select equipment and beans, pay attention to parameters, pursue techniques... isn't it all to make the coffee in our hands more delicious?

However, compared to professional baristas, our experience brewing coffee at home is relatively limited, and our equipment isn't as comprehensive and precise as in coffee shops. Therefore, we occasionally encounter some brewing difficulties, momentarily unsure which detail went wrong and how to solve it.

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will address common extraction problems in home brewing through different practical cases.

1. Severe Water Pooling in the Final Stage, Coffee Drips Slowly

This is a problem many beginners have encountered. What we call "water pooling" is actually excessive fine powder blocking the gaps in the filter paper, leading to slow drainage. The drip time generally exceeds two and a half minutes. With too much fine powder, the bottom of the coffee bed usually appears wet, even becoming paste-like, and the coffee will taste bitter, even with an unpleasant woody flavor. This type of fine powder is mainly influenced by two factors: the grinder and the grind size.

Regardless of which grinder is used, the cracking process of coffee beans after roasting will produce more or less very fine powder before grinding, which is often much smaller than the expected grind size. Compared to home manual grinders, electric grinders have larger and more precise burrs, grind faster, and generate less heat, resulting in more uniform grinding quality and a lower proportion of extremely fine powder than manual grinding.

Facing constant blockage and slow drainage, FrontStreet Coffee suggests ensuring the grinder produces uniform grounds, then try adjusting the grind size coarser to see if flow rate and taste improve. If the flow rate increases but the taste becomes a bit weak, you can try increasing the water temperature by 1-2 degrees or reducing the powder-to-water ratio for balance. However, if it still clogs after adjusting coarser and the surface shows obvious large particles, you might consider purchasing a dedicated sieve to remove some particles smaller than 0.2mm, reducing bitterness from over-extraction.

2. Flow Rate Suddenly Increases with the Same Grind Size

Many people have reported this situation to FrontStreet Coffee: one day they changed to a new bag of coffee beans, clearly marked with the same fruity flavor type as before, so they didn't adjust the grind size. But when they started pouring water, they found the drainage speed was extremely fast. The usual extraction process of over two minutes now completed in less than a minute and a half. From FrontStreet Coffee's experience, unless there's an exception, these people likely bought anaerobic-type beans.

After sealed fermentation, the internal structure of anaerobic processed coffee beans becomes very soft. Even with light roasting, their density is lower than beans processed by traditional methods like natural or washed. After roasting, anaerobic coffee beans have larger pores, so under the same grind setting, they flow much faster than other fruity acidic beans, increasing the probability of under-extraction.

Therefore, to achieve a fuller coffee taste, when grinding these anaerobic beans, we should adjust the setting slightly finer, combined with segmented pouring to extend the time of rinsing the coffee bed, thereby improving the release efficiency of soluble substances.

3. Coffee Sometimes Tastes Good, Sometimes Has Lots of Off-flavors

For a cup of coffee to taste good, FrontStreet Coffee believes it离不开 three key elements: coffee beans, grinder, and water. If we can confirm the quality of the coffee beans is fine (for example, smelling good aroma when grinding), the grinder and grind setting are within reasonable range, and the technique isn't problematic (the coffee bed appears neat and fluffy after brewing), but the coffee still tastes off, then it's very likely a water quality issue.

In the water we encounter daily, various minerals exist in trace amounts. Though不易察觉, they directly affect the water's softness and hardness. Research shows that appropriate calcium ions in water can better dissolve coffee's acidity, while water with suitable magnesium ions can effectively enhance the release of coffee's sweetness and aroma. However, if there's too much magnesium, coffee becomes bitter; too much calcium makes coffee easily become complex and astringent.

Therefore, to make coffee taste good, brewing water shouldn't be "make-do." As for whether to choose purified water, mountain spring water, mineral water, or home-filtered water, everyone can refer to FrontStreet Coffee's previous "Water Article."

4. Coffee Lacks Flavor Complexity, Is Overly Sour, and Has Watery Texture

When pouring water in circles, some people habitually use small streams in small circles throughout, maintaining the liquid level at half the filter cup's height; others prefer to rinse all coffee powder with each pour, sometimes hitting the filter cup wall, thinking this ensures even extraction.

The former only rinses the central part of the coffee particles, while the latter washes down the previously accumulated powder wall entirely. Both habits cause coffee powder to accumulate at the bottom, resulting in coffee that is either bland and tasteless or low-pitched and thick, lacking complexity.

Additionally, there's another situation: pouring too forcefully in the final stage. A water stream with too much force will break through the previously constructed wall, and this section of coffee powder will be washed down, forming a two-segmented shape. If you continue pouring into the broken area, hot water will directly pass through the filter paper and flow away from the cup's ribbed edges, causing "channel effect" - uneven extraction. Meanwhile, the particles adhering to the filter paper surface in the upper layer don't participate in extraction, resulting in coffee that is sharp, bland, and watery.

It's not difficult to achieve good flavor complexity in coffee. Taking FrontStreet Coffee's commonly used three-stage method as an example, after the bloom stage, we first use steady, vertical large streams, maintaining a distance of 3-4cm from the liquid surface, evenly circling to rinse the coffee bed, continuously expanding from center outward in a clockwise direction until the timer scale shows 125 grams.

As the liquid level rises, fewer coffee particles can adhere to the filter paper. When the water level drops to halfway, begin pouring along the radius at 1/2 of the liquid surface in concentric circles, gently injecting with a small water stream 2cm high.

5. Coffee's Aftertaste Always Has Smoky or Burnt Flavors

In cupping, smoky and burnt flavors are generally considered negative qualities that should be penalized, usually appearing in over-roasted coffee beans. The mouthfeel resembles the smoky sensation from burning wood. In home brewing scenarios, these flavors more often result from over-extraction when brewing dark roast coffee with incorrect parameters.

Everyone should know that dark roast coffee beans undergo longer heating time, and their internal structure is already in a very loose state. When ground with a manual grinder, you can feel how easily they crush into powder. As you can imagine, under the rinsing of high-temperature hot water, they more easily release roasted flavor compounds,一不小心 becoming a cup of "Cantonese herbal tea." Therefore, to avoid over-extraction, when setting brewing parameters, we should avoid water temperatures that are too high and grinds that are too fine.

FrontStreet Coffee suggests brewing dark roast beans最好将水温降低至86~88°C, using a grind size similar to raw sugar (70% passing rate through a #20 standard sieve), with slower circular pouring speed and as gentle movements as possible. This not only avoids smoky flavors in coffee but also maintains good body.

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473