How to Improve Vague Coffee Flavors

When we first start learning pour-over coffee, we often encounter many difficult problems. For example, FrontStreet Coffee frequently shares common issues such as coffee with obvious bitterness and impurities, sharp acidity, or a heavy watery texture with thin mouthfeel.

Today, FrontStreet Coffee wants to share another problem that beginners often encounter. However, compared to the aforementioned issues, its characteristics are not as obvious. It is: "The brewed coffee doesn't taste bad, but its flavors are very vague, making it difficult to distinguish."

Many friends often attribute this situation to "the beans themselves just perform this way" and then don't make any corrections to the problem. However, in reality, vague flavors are caused by many reasons other than the beans themselves. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee will share today how to improve this situation and make the brewed coffee flavors more pronounced.

1. Coffee Concentration is Too High

First, a relatively common reason is that the coffee concentration is too high! When FrontStreet Coffee shares posts about concentration, we always mention that when coffee concentration is too high, we will find it difficult to discern delicate flavors from the coffee.

Just as it's difficult to quickly recognize specific faces in a dense crowd, when coffee concentration is too high, the flavor compounds in the coffee will be very concentrated. The taste buds and olfactory senses cannot quickly process such large amounts of concentrated information in a short time, so they simply package all flavors into a vague whole and send it to the brain. This situation is easy to solve - we just need to add a little more water during the brewing process, or add some bypass water to the coffee after brewing is complete. This way, the coffee concentration can be diluted, and the flavors can thus unfold.

However, we need to know that many times, higher concentration is not because we changed the coffee-to-water ratio during brewing, but because we didn't change it. What does this mean? The same extraction parameters do not apply to all coffee beans. For example: some coffee beans have lower density and are easier to extract, so the same extraction parameters applied to them might extract more substances. So even when brewing them with the same 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio as other coffee beans, their concentration will be higher than other coffees, which in turn leads to less clear flavors.

Therefore, if the coffee you drink doesn't have distinct flavor characteristics, and there's no sharp acidity from under-extraction or bitter, burnt taste from over-extraction, but the taste is rather strong, then it's very likely caused by excessive concentration. We only need to add a little more water (10-20ml) during brewing, or dilute the concentration through bypass (10-20ml) after brewing is complete, which should improve this situation and make the flavors more pronounced and distinguishable.

2. Over-Extraction

The second relatively common reason is over-extraction! When we dissolve too much bitter and impurity substances from the coffee, the coffee's flavors won't be as pronounced. Because we are more sensitive to these tastes, when these substances account for slightly more in the coffee, they will mask certain flavors.

FrontStreet Coffee believes there's no need to elaborate too much on the causes of over-extraction, as everyone is already familiar with them. Factors such as grinding too fine, water temperature too high, extraction time too long, or stirring too vigorously are all main factors that cause extraction efficiency to overflow and lead to over-extracted coffee. But as long as the over-extraction isn't too extreme, we only need to select one of these factors to improve. For example, adjusting the grind to be coarser, lowering the water temperature, shortening the time, or reducing the degree of stirring~ And if the over-extraction is very exaggerated with very obvious bitterness, then it's necessary to re-examine the degree of compatibility between extraction parameters and coffee beans, and then reformulate.

3. Coffee Beans Are Too Fresh

If we're brewing coffee beans that were freshly roasted not long ago, we can also easily brew a cup of coffee with vague flavors. The reason is simply because the beans are too fresh!

Coffee beans have the most abundant carbon dioxide content shortly after roasting. The presence of carbon dioxide will hinder hot water extraction, reducing the extraction rate. If we brew these beans without adjusting brewing parameters, it will easily lead to under-extraction due to excessive carbon dioxide content. At the same time, freshly roasted coffee beans will retain a roasting residual dryness for a period of time, which will also affect the flavor expression of the coffee. Combined with the situation of under-extraction, the brewed coffee flavors will be more difficult to capture.

There are two solutions to this situation. The more traditional approach is to let the beans rest for a while. After most of the carbon dioxide and dryness in the beans have been released, we can start brewing coffee. Light roast beans generally need to rest for about 3-5 days, while dark roast beans can rest for a slightly longer period. Another method is to influence the coffee's extraction efficiency by adjusting coffee parameters, such as pre-grinding, grinding finer, increasing water temperature, extending the blooming time, or increasing the frequency/intensity of stirring. FrontStreet Coffee has shared these methods before, so we won't elaborate too much here.

4. Using Water That's Too Hard for Brewing

There's one thing in coffee brewing that may seem ordinary, but it can directly affect the taste and flavor of coffee. That's right! It's -- water.

For coffee making, the choice of water source is very important. For example, for American coffee, the choice of water will directly affect the mouthfeel of the coffee; or for pour-over coffee, the choice of water will affect the brewed coffee flavors. Although water appears colorless and tasteless, most of it actually contains minerals, and it's precisely these minerals that affect the taste and mouthfeel of coffee. When there are more minerals in the water, the water quality is harder, and vice versa. Water that is too hard or too soft is not suitable for coffee brewing because they cannot fully dissolve the flavor compounds in coffee. Besides hardness, it's also affected by pH level, but because it's too complicated to explain, we won't mention it much here. Interested friends can check out FrontStreet Coffee's previous articles for more information.

In the "Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality" published by the World Health Organization, water with hardness below 200ppm is called soft water, while above that is called hard water. As for recommendations for coffee brewing water, SCA suggests controlling the water hardness range between 75-250ppm, with an ideal value of 150ppm, but generally, water that is easier to brew good-tasting coffee will be below 100ppm. Therefore, we can also improve the flavor expression of coffee by changing the water source. It's worth mentioning that try not to use unfiltered tap water for brewing. Although tap water in many cities meets soft water standards, the brewed taste is not pleasant because the water lacks beneficial minerals for extraction. At the same time, using it for a long time can easily cause scale buildup in the kettle, adding many cleaning problems. But filtering it solves the issue~

So above are the four directions that can improve vague flavors. Everyone can compare and see if adjustments are needed~

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