The 5 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Brewing Coffee at Home
And How to Fix Them
Taylor
9/16/20265 min read
Most people who drink coffee every day aren’t trying to become coffee experts. They just want their morning coffee to taste good without turning the process into a science experiment. Actually, many people don't even care if their coffee taste good, or rather, they don't KNOW that their coffee taste bad.
The good news is that better coffee at home usually doesn’t require an expensive setup or a complicated routine. In fact, a few small changes can make a surprisingly big difference. If your coffee tastes flat, bitter, weak, or just never quite as good as what you get from a good coffee shop, there’s a good chance one of these common mistakes is the reason.
Mistake #1: Buying Coffee Without Paying Attention to Freshness
One of the biggest mistakes people make happens before they even start brewing. They buy coffee based on the brand, the roast level, or whatever bag happens to be on sale, without thinking much about when the coffee was actually roasted. Or worse, they buy based on the coffee notes... STAY AWAY FROM THE COFFEE NOTES PEOPLE.
Coffee doesn’t stay at its best forever. As roasted coffee sits, it gradually loses the aromas and flavors that make it taste fresh and interesting. This is one reason buying directly from a good local or online coffee roaster can make such a noticeable difference. Roasters will commonly tell you when the coffee was roasted, whereas supermarket coffee may have been sitting around for quite a while before it ever reaches your kitchen.
When possible, look for a roast date on the bag rather than relying entirely on a distant “best by” date. Buying smaller amounts of coffee more frequently is usually better than stocking up on several months' worth at once.
You don’t need coffee that was roasted yesterday; and actually you shouldn't get beans that were roasted yesterday. Really what you are looking for are beans that were roasted about 2 weeks ago.
Mistake #2: Buying Pre-Ground Coffee
If there is one easy change that can noticeably improve your coffee, it is buying whole beans and grinding them yourself.
Once coffee is ground, much more of it is exposed to air. That means the aromas and flavors you actually want in your cup begin disappearing much faster. A bag of pre-ground coffee may be convenient, but it gives up freshness for that convenience.
Grinding your coffee immediately before brewing helps preserve more of those flavors. You also gain control over the grind size, which becomes important when you want to fine-tune how your coffee tastes.
You don’t need an elaborate grinder either. A decent burr grinder is a worthwhile upgrade for someone who drinks coffee regularly, and it will generally make a bigger difference than spending the same money on a fancier coffee maker.
Mistake #3: Ignoring the Water
People spend a lot of time thinking about coffee beans and almost no time thinking about the water they use to brew them.
That is a huge mistake seeing how your cup of coffee is 98% water.
If your tap water has a noticeable chlorine taste, unusual mineral flavor, or simply doesn’t taste very good on its own, it can affect the coffee you make with it. The mineral content of water also influences how flavors are extracted from coffee, so water that is extremely hard or unusually soft can change the way the same beans taste.
For most people, the solution doesn’t need to be complicated. Try brewing with good-tasting filtered water and compare it with your normal tap water. Depending on where you live, quality bottled spring water can also work well (and actually might work much better depending on some research).
The basic rule is simple: if you wouldn’t enjoy drinking the water by itself, you probably shouldn’t expect it to make great coffee.
Mistake #4: Measuring Coffee With a Scoop Instead of a Scale
Most people make coffee by filling a scoop, dumping it into the brewer, and calling it close enough.
That works, but it also makes it surprisingly difficult to make the same cup of coffee twice.
Different coffees have different densities, and the amount that fits into a tablespoon or coffee scoop can vary. Measuring by weight removes the guesswork. A small digital kitchen scale lets you know exactly how much coffee and water you are using, which makes your brewing much more consistent.
A good starting point is roughly one gram of coffee for every 16 to 17 grams of water. From there, you can adjust according to your taste. If you want stronger coffee, use a little more coffee. If you want it lighter, use a little less.
The point isn’t to obsess over the numbers. The scale simply gives you a reliable starting point instead of hoping that today’s scoop happens to match yesterday’s.
Mistake #5: Never Adjusting the Grind Size
It's true that most people don't even have a grinder at home so this one isn't applicable to the masses. And those who do have a grinder probably have one because they understand how important grind size is. Regardless, I personally have seen people set the grind size they prefer for a certain type of bean and roast and then just expect it to be the most optimized for every other coffee variant out there. Which...simply isn't true (but MAN do I wish it was that easy).
So what happens is a lot of people will assume that if their coffee doesn’t taste good, they need different beans or a better coffee maker. Sometimes the real problem is much simpler: the coffee is ground too fine or too coarse. Grind size affects how quickly water extracts flavor from coffee. If the grind is too coarse for your brewing method, the coffee can taste thin, sharp, or sour. If it is too fine, the coffee can become overly bitter, dry, or harsh.
This is another reason owning a grinder is so useful. If your coffee doesn’t taste quite right, you can make a small adjustment to the grind and see what happens.
And despite what you may hear from serious coffee enthusiasts, you do not have to throw away your automatic drip coffee maker and start making pour-over coffee every morning. A good drip brewer is perfectly capable of making excellent coffee (although I am a sucker for pourover - what can I say?) A pour-over gives you more control over the brewing process, which is great if you enjoy that sort of thing. But for most people, fixing the fundamentals will make a much bigger difference than changing brewing methods.
You Don’t Need to Become a Coffee Expert to Make Better Coffee
Making better coffee at home doesn’t have to become a hobby.
You don’t need a cabinet full of brewing equipment, a complicated recipe, or an encyclopedic knowledge of coffee-producing regions. Start with fresh coffee, buy whole beans, grind them shortly before brewing, use good water, weigh your coffee, and pay attention to the grind size.
Those five changes alone can completely change what comes out of the coffee maker you already own.
Before spending hundreds of dollars on a new brewer, fix the simple things first. You may find that the coffee you were looking for was much easier to make than you thought.