What makes brewed coffee bitter

This YouTube recipe shows the importance of timing in making pour-over coffee. The size of your coffee grounds has an important part to play in getting the perfect flavors.

The smaller the grounds, the faster the flavors will be extracted. Different grind sizes suit different brewing styles.

If it is, the result will be bitter flavors. This YouTube video shows the effect of grind size on extraction time. It also explains what the combination of those two factors means for the taste of an espresso. The ratio of water to coffee in your brew is also very important for flavor. The more coffee you put in the same amount of water, the stronger it will be. Individual varietals will have different flavors, and different roast profiles will affect those too.

And then there are the two basic coffee types, Robusta and Arabica. Robusta beans have a more bitter flavor. In Vietnamese coffee, the bitterness of local Robusta beans is balanced with condensed milk for delicious results.

Homegrounds is reader-supported. When you buy via the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission at no cost to you. Learn more. No one is born a coffee lover. Coffee is naturally bitter, but there are times when your face may scrunch up after trying a new brew, because it is TOO bitter.

What makes coffee bitter? Steeping describes a method of brewing coffee where you directly mix your grinds with water as opposed to passing it through a filter. This is because of over-extraction. Extract too much and the coffee tastes bitter. Extract too little and the coffee will be weak and taste sour. Get the extraction just right, and all the delicious flavors and oils inside the coffee grounds end up in your cup. The solution: Reduce your steeping time. You can also use a brewed coffee compass to explore your coffee making journey.

Steeping is really limited to a few specific coffee brewing methods. Rinsing your French press after every use is fine as long as you back-flush the filter mesh thoroughly. Aside from health reasons, water quality is important if you want to brew good tasting coffee. Give it a clean. The solution: Neutralize acidity a leading cause of bitterness and keep your equipment clean by using a little baking soda to scrub it down, especially if your filter cone has grooves and ridges inside to help with the drawdown.

A long-handled brush and a little baking soda will also make a glass carafe sparkle. This works whatever you use — a French press, a drip coffee maker or a pour over. Once coffee dries, it takes more work to remove it. The point is, when you brew coffee, you want to make sure you only savor the coffee from today. Brewing great coffee is a skill. But a good burr grinder will give you fine control over grind size, and allow you the flexibility to try different sizes till you find one that works for you.

This way, your coffee tastes exactly like how it should — without extracting the bitter compounds that can spoil the flavor. Rule of thumb: finer grinds extract more flavor but also contribute more bitterness, while a coarser grind makes a lighter but sweeter brew.

Some are extracted fairly quickly, from the surface of the grinds, while others are extracted from the interior, which takes more time. By changing the grind, you change the relative extraction of the interior and surface compounds. Plus, a finer grind slows the process of water flowing through the grinds, which causes over-extraction, leading to more bitter flavors in the cup. The solution: If bitterness is your enemy, then grinding a little coarser just might be your best friend.

Print it off and use it. We all know that coffee should be prepared hot. But did you know that factors such as water type and temperature play a significant role in brewing the perfect cuppa? However, decaffeinated coffee tastes bitter too. In the end, science does not know completely which compounds make coffee bitter. That is why many researchers around the globe dedicated their work for elucidating the bitter taste of coffee and what can be done to have an alluring, balanced bitterness in the cup rather than a lingering, harsh one.

Many factors are taken into consideration to answer those questions for the perfect bitterness of coffee. First of all, it is all dependent on the chemical composition of raw coffee. Chlorogenic acids have an impact on the bitter taste later on.

Besides, recent research shows that chlorogenic acids have all kinds of health beneficial effects such as reducing blood pressure, improving glucose regulation thus being Diabetes Type II preventive, as well as being anti-inflammatory. Back to the impact of chlorogenic acids on the taste of the coffee: Chlorogenic acids themselves are only tasting sour.

How do they cause the bitter taste? That is the crucial chemical step turning the acidic chlorogenic acids into bitter tasting chlorogenic acid lactones. However, the reaction does not stop here. These compounds are somehow undesired as they make our cup of coffee harshly bitter tasting. Recently, research might also indicate that based on phenylindanes and lactones and a whole variety of minor tastes, active and bitter taste-enhancing compounds are formed in later stages of the roasting.

Besides the roasting, the preparation method is also highly influential on the bitter taste of the coffee.