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Why My Coffee Taste so Bad

Many people try to make their own coffee at home. But they are not always satisfied with the results. Often, the taste of bad coffee leaves that harsh, ashy bitterness in the mouth for some time after drinking your cup of coffee.

Here are some usual complaints about coffee taste:

-    My coffee tastes horrible!
-    My coffee tastes as an infusion of ashtray.
-    I can't even swallow its so bad.
-    My coffee tastes like plastic.
-    I used coffee grounds and it tasted like #@*%!!!!
-    My coffee has a burnt taste.
-    My coffee taste like mud.
-    My coffee tastes more like toilet water.
-    My coffee taste like old newspaper soup.
-    My coffee taste awful, just like truck oil.
-    It is more like a burnt water taste.
-    My coffee latte taste like soap.

All those people sounded very frustrated too. One even says: "When I taste my own made coffee I would like to kill myself (or somebody else)".

So, why does your coffee taste so bad?

There are many reasons why your home made coffee can taste bad. It depends on many factors like what kind of coffee you are using, what coffee maker you are using, what method of making coffee you are using, do you roast coffee yourself, etc.

But in general, there are 4 main reasons why your coffee taste bad:

1.    You are using bad coffee
2.    Your coffeemaker is dirty
3.    You are using bad water
4.    You don't know how to make good coffee

1. You are using a bad coffee

Bad coffee. How coffee can be bad?

- Maybe you just bought some cheap bad tested coffee.
- Maybe your coffee is bad roasted (or roasted on the wrong way, to green or over roasted).
- Your coffee beans can be old or not stored on the properly way. The oils in coffee can go rancid just like any other oil.
- Your Coffee is stale. Can be grinded long time ago, and again not properly stored, loosing taste or catch moisture.
- Can be grinded to coarse
- Can be bad mix of different types of coffee beans.

CaffeMaker Tip:
Always grind a small amount of roasted coffee beans just enough for one day. If something left, store coffee ground in well-closed box (air tide).

If you want to save on some excellent coffees, check out our bonuses by clicking here

2. Coffeemaker is dirty

Some surveys show that almost 90% coffee makers in US kitchens are dirty.
And here you have your answer why your coffee often taste bad!

Clean your coffee maker properly, and your coffee will taste better! A monthly cleaning will help ensure a great tasting cup of coffee.
The taste of dirt is quite particular, leaving that harsh, ashy bitterness in the mouth for some time after tasting the shot

There are three main ways of cleaning your coffee machines.

Cleaning with water

Wash your coffee pot with water. Rub with soft napkin, wash over again and dry with clean cloth. Critical places are places where the hot water comes out and drops into the ground coffee and where the coffee drips out into the pot. After some time really nasty coagulations of greasy oily coffee residue build up. Both locations can get stinky and ruin taste the coffee. Clean this places with hot water.

Cleaning with attenuate acid (vinegar or citric acid)

Once a month fills the water reservoir with a mixture that's half distilled white vinegar, half water. Turn on the coffeemaker. Let several cups run through, then turn it off, & let sit for an hour. Start the machine again to complete the cycle, discarding the vinegar mixture afterward.
The acids in the vinegar should clean away the scaling and mineral deposits that eventually clog and strain your coffee maker. Sure, it smells bad, but it works!
Run plain water through the coffeemaker a few times until the vinegar odor disappears.

Cleaning with professional cleaning products

Today's cleaning products for pots, brewers, urns, airports and carafes are designed to make cleaning faster, easier, safer and more cost-effective. They help prevent the accumulation of scale deposits, which are responsible for slow brew times, and equipment malfunctions. Also, they remove flavor-tainting stale coffee oil residue.

Run a brew cycle with a cleaner in the filter basket (or in the pot) to simultaneously clean both the brew basket and server beneath.

Some of these cleaning products are:
Rinza� Milk Frother Cleaner - Liquid
Cafiza� Espresso Machine Cleaner - Powder
Cleancaf� Brewer Cleaner and Descaler - Packets
Clearly Coffee� Powdered Coffee Pot Cleaner
Dezcal™ Activated Scale Remover
Grindz™ Grinder Cleaner
Tabz™ Coffee Equipment Cleaner

CaffeMaker Tip:
Don’t use any soap or detergent. Just wash it in dry water!

3.You are using a bad water

Quality water is on the third place for the good tasted coffee. Change the water you use for making coffee and taste of your coffee can change drastically because there is no doubt that water has quite a role in coffee taste. Believe it not, the water that comes out of the faucet or the plastic container has a certain taste. This is influenced by the filtration process to ensure that this is safe for people to drink so customers have to check on it before pouring it into the coffee maker. But the taste of straight water is quite subjective. (Water facts and observations below I took from excellent Jim Schulman site).

There are people who insist that good coffee water must be fresh. Some go so far as to change the water in their tanks every few hours. As justification they mention that fresh water has dissolved gasses, and stale water does not.

Bottled waters mostly come in two kinds, alkaline ones with massive mineral levels just below brackish, and acidic ones with mineral levels just above RO (reverse osmosis) flatness.

Which water to use for making coffee?

As with all things in our lives, home coffee makers often must compromise between good coffee taste and how often they had cleaning their coffee makers.

When it comes to water for making coffee there's basically three choices:

1. Using boiler safe water and never descaling.
2. Using water close to 90 mg/l hardness, 50 mg/l alkalinity and descaling less frequently.
3. Using harder water and descaling more frequently.

The choice mostly depends on how much the machine is used, and how hard it is to descale.

The exception is when your municipal waterboard does its disinfections with chloramines. It does have a taste, but it should be removed by carbon filtering in water for food or drink.

If the local tap water is unsuitable, and bottled waters too expensive, a third alternative is to treat the water by yourself. Available options are charcoal filtering, mineral introduction, distillation and reverse osmosis and ion exchange softening. Those treatment options can be combined to get water with more or less custom mineral levels.

Home machine users are better served using neutral or harder water and preventively descaling. There's several ways to water softening. The simplest is to boil the water for a few minutes. This removes hardness in excess of coffee levels. Finally, tap water can be diluted with RO water to reach any hardness level one wants.

Avoid the Brita or Pur jug filter for this, since their use of hydrogen ion replacement makes the water slightly acidic, and leaves much of the calcium in.
On the other hand, if you have very soft water, or an RO system in the house, add a small pinch of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to every liter of water when you refill the tank. This will not be tasteable, and will supply about 70 mg/l of non-scaling alkalinity, more than enough to protect the boiler.

According to Jim Schulman it is best to use Volvic or Crystal Geyser Natural Alpine water in your home espresso machine. They have formulations that won't scale, but which still taste OK for coffee. Neutral pH water with 90 mg/l hardness is optimal for coffee taste.

As you can see, it isn't that hard to make a good cup of coffee. It just takes some time to choose right coffee machine for the type of coffee you like, keep it clean, than pick up the right fresh beans that will be able to give its rich taste to the user and use good water. Also, good receipts will help.


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