5 Common Reasons Why Your Coffee Tastes Bad And Their Solution

If you are a coffee lover, every morning you eagerly wait for your first cup of coffee to begin your new day. But if your coffee doesn’t taste good, it might probably ruin your day.

Especially when you are looking forward to a heavenly cup of coffee since the night before, you would probably feel like crying when your coffee tastes like bitter or burnt as sin.

Being a coffee lover, you might be expecting your coffee to taste rich and satisfying that can make your day go right. However, due to a number of reasons your coffee may taste like soap.

Although the unusual answer to the shitty coffee is a massive dose of cream and sugar to block it, still, the good coffee doesn’t need the high dose of cream and sugar to taste rich and drinkable.

So, if you are facing a hard time with your bad coffee every morning, here are a few reasons that make your coffee taste bad and along with some recommendations to fix it.

So wondering why your coffee tastes bad? Check out the following reasons:

#1: Sour Coffee:

Reason: Under extraction is the main reason your coffee tastes sour.

One of the main symptoms that cause your coffee tastes like a sin is its sour flavor.  Many people complaining about their sour coffee and wondering why is my coffee sour.

Well, the answer to this question: an underdeveloped and under-extracted cup.

Solution: If you expect your coffee to be naturally sweet with a full mouth-feel, then you need to give your coffee more time and don’t forget to adjust its grind.

The coffee granule size will determine the extraction time and the grind size. So the coffee granules that are large will require more extraction time. Just bring your grind down a bit and try again.

#2: Burnt Coffee:

Reason: Water temperature, time and grind might be the reasons why your coffee tastes burnt.

Solution: Coming to the first reason, water temperature might be the reason for turning your coffee taste from raspberry to ashes.

Let’s keep it simple.

Adding boiling water to coffee is like a torture. So the pro tip here is, don’t put boiling hot water in your coffee.

Your coffee will always burn if you pour water with a temperature of 96^oC or above. So add hot water, not boiling and you will feel your coffee tastes perfect.

Time is another important factor that will determine the taste of your coffee. When you add hot water in coffee, it will extract the flavors first and then it will extract the bitter compounds that actually ruin your coffee.

Wait too long and your coffee would taste like ashes. So your timing should be perfect and that will totally depend on your grind.

Grinding finer can turn your coffee good and bad too, at the same time. So, you need to grind your coffee to an appropriate size and along with that, you need to adjust the time properly.

Moreover, if you are using a blade grinder to grind your coffee, your coffee will taste burnt, even if you are not brewing too long. For that, you need to switch from blade grinder to burr grinder.

#3: Stale Coffee:

Reason: Your coffee beans are not fresh.

Most of us know the taste of coffee that has been made using the stale coffee beans. And trust me, there’s nothing worse than that.

Unfortunately, the shelf life of the coffee beans is reduced to almost half after they are roasted.

Solution: So, the solution to your stale coffee is to use fresh coffee beans instead of the stale ones. Coffee beans don’t last forever, so when you are out to buy your coffee jar, do check the roasting time and date and then make sure to use it as fast as possible. If you want to store it, make sure to store it in air sealed containers.

#4: Flat Taste Coffee:

Reason: Flat taste coffee is unavoidable if your brewing equipment is not clean.

Solution: Well, you need to admit that you might not be that good at cleaning your brewing equipment and it could be the reason why your coffee tastes awful.

Moreover, the cleaning of the coffee maker often gets ignored even when your ninja coffee bar clean light keeps coming on. So, you need to clean your coffee periodically.

All you need is a descaling solution to descale the calcium deposits that are definitely affecting your coffee brewing.

#5: Other off Flavors:

Reason: All the off flavors that can make your coffee taste bad include:

Alcohol tastes bad

Solution: Check all these parameters and make sure that all the elements of your approach to be as good as to make your coffee taste good. To fix the poor quality coffee, you can go with the Robusta coffee brands that will surely make the difference.

Make sure to descale your equipment from time to time. Moreover, don’t try to use alcohol with your coffee, it tastes awful.