Our Blog

Home brewed coffee is a very convenient way to get your fix, especially if you don’t live near a good café, and it is becoming more and more popular with all the different methods and training available out there. But with so much variety in coffee out there for you to purchase, it can sometimes become very confusing to keep up with new recipes and brew suggestions if you suddenly change what coffee you buy. So how do you know what to do with your coffee if suddenly the flavour just isn’t right? These few little points will help you figure out what to do at home to create the flavour you most enjoy without needing to buy a whole new bag of beans.

Firstly, let’s establish what it is you don’t like about the coffee you are drinking. Is the flavour too strong or is it too weak? Is it too sour (or acidic) or is it just bland and watery? Is the coffee too bitter? Does it leave a dryness in your mouth when you sip it or does it leave an unpleasant aftertaste? The answers to these questions provide very strong clues as to how your coffee is behaving and what moves you should make to counteract these flavours.

Generally speaking, if the coffee flavour is not perfect, then it is one of two things: it is either OVER EXTRACTED or it is UNDER EXTRACTED. Let’s talk extreme differences here. The over extracted coffee will taste: strong, bitter, intense and very out of balance with a yucky aftertaste. You may need to add an extra sugar or two to remove that intensity. The under extracted coffee will taste: weak, watery, perhaps flavourless and you are wanting more to come out of the coffee.

But why does over extracting and under extracting the coffee create these differences?

Let’s think back to high school science when we learnt about the surface area to volume ratio. If the ground coffee is fairly coarse and the grains are large like sand, then there is a small surface area to volume ratio. There is a lot of coffee inside the ground pieces that must be extracted through the surface of that grind into the water. This means that if you have very coarse coffee grinds, then you must allow a long period of time for the coffee flavour and oils to be extracted into the water for you to drink. Conversely, if the ground coffee is fairly fine and the grains are more like a powder, then there is a large surface area to volume ratio. There is not a lot of coffee inside the ground pieces that need extracting and so it does not take long for the water to take out the flavour and the oils for you to drink.

So how do you fix this? There are a few different ways to do so and depending on what is available to you, you can muck around with these variables until you find that sweet spot.

GRIND SIZE

As a specialty coffee team, we will try and encourage you to grind your coffee to order, but we also understand that sometimes it is just too hard or too expensive to have your own grinder when you don’t make that much coffee at home. So buying your coffee and pre grinding it makes a lot of sense.

When grinding your own coffee, adjust the blades in very small increments to find the grind size that you need. It may take a few rounds of testing, but with patience you will find the right spot. If the brewed coffee is:

UNDER EXTRACTED – make the grind finer

OVER EXTRACTED – make the grind coarser

If you are grinding the whole bag when you buy it from your local café, ask the staff to alter their usual grind setting for you. Describe what you’re tasting and they should know how to fix it for you.

ALTER YOUR TIME

Sometimes, your coffee is simply over extracted because you left it to brew for too long! Compare it to tea – leave the bag in the water that extra minute and the tea is suddenly too tart or too bitter or too strong. Same deal with coffee. Try adjust your brew time to compensate for your over or under extracted coffee.

ADJUST YOUR RECIPE

One other way your coffee may taste over or under extracted is because you haven’t put in the correct amount of coffee to your water volume. Again, compare it to tea – if you put in teaspoon of tea leaves to a litre of water, you are not going to pull out much flavour. If you put in a cup of tea leaves to 200mL of water, you might as well be making a syrup.

You can always ask your Coffee Brothers and Sisters or coffee supplier for any recommended ratios when brewing coffee, but trust your own judgements and your own tastebuds. If it is tasting too strong, perhaps put less coffee in the water to brew. Alternatively, if it is too weak, increase the amount of coffee. Often it will not need to be a big adjustment. When we brew coffee at the café and need to adjust the ratio, we may simply alter the recipe from 6grams of coffee per 100mL of water to 6.5grams of coffee per 100mL of water. This can make all the difference.

When experimenting with your brew method, be sure to remember your adjustments so you can nail your coffee next time you go to brew it.

Hopefully these few little short tips will be enough to help you nail your home brews. Feel free to let us know how you go.