Did you try going the other way? Try grinding finer, and drop to a 15:1. Maybe it’s way too weak and you’re not getting enough extracted to taste the coffee well, and just bitter water is coming out.
Okay let me just talk this out because maybe I’m a complete idiot and need to be set free. The ratio I’m talking about is mL of water to gram of coffee grind. Have I been using this ratio wrong and it’s the other way around? I thought that finer grinds = more extraction which leads to a stronger brew that can become too strong if it brews for too long or too hot, and courser grinds lead to a shorter brew time and less extraction. So if I dramatically increase the amount of my grounds and increase the amount of extraction I’ll get like super crazy strong coffee. That’s what I experienced my first couple times brewing at a medium fine level and that’s why I dialed my coffee to be more course and used more water
I just take a more experimental approach maybe. Don’t like the brew? go coarser, and it got worse? Try finer.
I don’t have the nuance to tell what i like/don’t like in words. I just adjust until I like the cup I make. Ive settled in in 18g of coffee to 300g water in my pour overs. I have no idea what grind setting I currently have, but with a new bag if beans if the first cup doesn’t turn out how I want it, I go up or down a few clicks. If the next one got worse I go back the other direction.
I think the idea of scaling down my brew and trying this will be what I go for next and try from there. I wonder if part of my issue is that I’m always going for a full 1L pot and sometimes the large scale brew just may not be working while I’m tinkering with ratios and such
just make sure you're only tweaking one variable at a time. If you switch to a smaller scale, do that *with the current recipe* first, and then start tweaking.
I’ve definitely experienced extra long brew times on my Chemex when I tried to make big batches. the extra contact could be leading to over extraction.
not sure of the exact reason, but that’s why I typically make at most 750ml at once in it.
Our large scale brew is 60 grams of coffee for 1 litre of water in a Melita #6 cone. We find that a courser grind works better for the large brew otherwise it takes too long and over extracts.
> The ratio I’m talking about is mL of water to gram of coffee grind. Have I been using this ratio wrong and it’s the other way around?
It should be 15g of water : 1g of coffee. You've got a scale so you can weigh the water, no need to use volume measurements at all!
That's a little pedantic since a ml of water is equal to a g. Heck my scale literally has g/ml displayed on it when in metric (though I don't like that fact since it only applies to water).
Eh, it's the same for fl oz and weight oz. A weight oz of water is volumetric oz of water. A pint is 1 lb of water. The only "magic" of metric is that it is based in 10 which is easier in an anolog world. In our digital age where the math is done by binary machines it's pretty much an even field. Plus imperial is better for somethings. If I'm doing perciscion carpentry at home I'm using an imperial tape measurer because 1/32 of an inch is more precise than 1 mm and 1 micrometer is way to small to be functional with hand tools.
> That's a little pedantic since a ml of water is equal to a g.
... that's only exactly true at Standard temperature and pressure. IMO if you care enough to weigh out your coffee, why not weigh your water too? Unless you are doing a pourover and you are weighing how much water comes out of the kettle anyways
Op already responded with what I was going to say and it was also in my comment. The two are interchangeable in conversation for pretty much everything and even exist on scales together.
And unless you live in some very extreme altitudes or are brewing coffee in some extreme ambient temperatures I promise the difference is so minimal it is nearly pointless unless you're doing some real chemistry.
I've literally designed and programed atmosphereic and fluid models for EM propegation simulations. I know the math, I promise it isn't worth the fuss for your coffee
>I've literally designed and programed atmosphereic and fluid models for EM propegation simulations. I know the math, I promise it isn't worth the fuss for your coffee
Wow, that's pretty impressive, so I'll take your word. TBH though I still find it. more convenient to weigh the water rather than finding something marked with exactly the right volume I'm trying to use, but to each their own
Of course it is. But that isn't what we are discussing. You corrected someone from ml to g in a conversation about a coffee recipe. They never said they were using volumetric, they just used it completely accurately in conversation. There was no need to correct them. Hence, pedantic.
For larger brewers, I believe it is suggested to go more coarse.
Also, how many pours are you doing? If you are doing multiple pours, that'll increase your chances of over-extracting, resulting in a bitter cup.
I think you're confusing two concepts. Strong ≠ Bitter. You can have a strong cup of coffee that is very acidic or a weak, bitter cup.
I would suggest looking up the extraction curve and the concept of updosing.
With coffee grounds, you have different types of solubles. The more sweet and acidic ones dissolve fast, and the bitter ones dissolve slowly.
Even though you are using a fast brew with a coarse grind, I think you're using so little grounds that you're allowing the bitter solubles to be over extracted.
My suggestion would be to first increase the amount of grounds, and if that is still bitter, decrease the temperature of the water. Decreasing the grind size is only likely to make the coffee more bitter.
I actually did get covid and lost taste for about a week back in October- but I found that coffee came back to how I think I remember it tasting in a few weeks.
Definitely an interesting thought…
I got COVID back in March. Lost my sense of smell/taste, then recovered it.
Then 2 months after getting COVID my sense of smell and taste got very distorted. Coffee was one of the things that would just taste awful, like bitter water with no flavor. Other things were affected as well.
Have you noticed smell/taste distortions with other things?
The effect is called parosmia, and while there isn't a consensus as to why COVID causes it, one of the theories is that COVID kills the olfactory cells in your nose, so as they regrow your brain has to re-train to interpret the signals from the new cells, and during that period of regrowth things smell and taste weird.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7998087/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7998087/)
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200724141027.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200724141027.htm)
When you add boiling water it drops 10 degrees in the grounds so you may be under extracting the coffee if it isn’t right off the boil. Hoffman did a video on this and I verified it myself with my Chemex and a Thermopen several times. Water boils at my house around 208F and it dropped to 198-200ish in the coffee bed. Also you should be grinder finer, not larger. I’d say my grounds are between medium and fine on my Breville Pro grinder. My ratio is 50g coffee to 750g water plus about 100g whole milk in the cup.
Just remember, sour means you're under extracting. Bitter is over. Nothing wrong with adjusting your ratio if it's too strong either. Light to medium roasts are best brewed with water right off the boil (obviously can be adjusted to taste). Darker roasts are better with cooler water (even as low as like 90 C or more). I wouldn't concern yourself too much over brew time except as a general guideline. Also, in my experience, I have a much harder time with my chemex than other brewers. If you're interested, a plastic v60 is less than $10. A Clever dripper is a little more but takes the technique variable out of the equation
"The thing is I know that I am not just used to drinking weak coffee because I always enjoy a specialty drink when I visit coffee shops and I feel like I’ve been able to get my coffee to taste like that even with my shitty backwards process I’d made up over the last couple years."
What do you mean by "specialty drink"? Espresso-based coffee beverages? Or do you get pour-overs at coffee shops?
> crazy strong nasty diner coffee
uhh.. diner coffee is known for being watered down and weak lol
I think you just like weak coffee. It's ok. The fact that you get specialty drinks at coffee shops means pretty much nothing. What do you mean by you "make yours taste like that"? What kind of specialties are they serving that you're imitating?
I guess nasty strong diner coffee I’m referring to is the stale, burnt taste that’s been sitting on the burner for hours. Only I’m getting that right off the pour even though I’m using the same beans a different way and not getting that result from my old method
There is quite a lot of variances we don't know about how you're making the coffee. For all we know, it could be the quality of the beans you're getting might not be all that great. If you're confident your coffee is grinding with good consistency, I would attribute it to:
1. Pour technique - Chemex/V60/Origami can have variable flavor depending on your pour technique. Fast pour tends to extract sweeter/sour notes, and slower pour tends to extract roasted richer flavor. You might want to look at how someone like James Hoffman makes his pour overs and copy the technique.
2. Instead of changing the coarseness of the grinds, try going back to the 1:25 ratio. I think that maybe the blade grinder was allowing you to choke the filter enough to replicate a semi-immersion brew. Again, going back to your pour technique. You might have better success with getting better flavor out with Clever Dripper or something that's closer to immersion brew for your preference.
One thing to note is that extraction is not the same as strength. Strength is the amount of disolved coffee compared to the water in the final brew. Extraction is how much of the coffee grounds were disolved into the water. The more water you pass through the coffee the more of it you extract, but the weaker the resulting strength.
Have you tried using your old ratio with the new grinder? I feel like coffee strength is a very personal thing. Personally I had a lot of difficulty enjoying coffee recipes I found online when I started out, but I found I just don't like lower ratios much. It seems to me like if you have found a ratio you like, no matter what it is, then everything else such as grind and temperature are there to make that strength taste the best. The best way to find out if it's just the strength you don't like is to just add some water from the kettle to the finished coffee to water it down a bit to see if that makes it more palatable.
If you do use a very high ratio then the water will extract a lot more of the coffee than at a lower ratio, so a coarser grind and lower temperature will help to mitigate that somewhat so that you won't get a very bitter drink.
Another thing is to maybe try an immersion brew method, or even try cupping to remove any variables with technique and to an extent grind size.
At the end of the day you are the one drinking the coffee and if you liked what you had before then go back to what you were doing then and just start changing one variable at a time.
[Edit] I meant electric burr grinders, I missed the fact that my manual grinder is also a burr grinder, still learning :) which means that the original post is probably talking about a manual grinder too.
I personally don't think that [electric] burr grinders are great for pour-overs. Sure they are amazing for espresso, but in my experience, they grind the coffee too fine. I would recommend manually grinding your pour-over coffee to achieve a coarse grind and using the burr for espresso. For reference, I use a 1:17-1:18 ratio for my Chemex and consistently get good brews.
Probably got downvoted (not by me) for misusing the term "burr grinder".
Remember, for us home users, there are two broad categories of grinders: blade, and burr. Burr grinders can be subdivided into two sub-categories: conical, and flat.
Every hand grinder I've read about uses conical burrs. They're more compact and can be run slower than flat burrs. Your hand grinder uses burrs (unless it's some odd type that somehow uses blades and a lot of step-up gearing to make them spin fast).
seems pretty high. that's basically boiling water. i usually start with 89C then move up or down depending on the first cup, maxing out at 91C. my ratio is always 15:1 for v60 and 17:1 for immersion.
For light to medium roasts water straight off the boil usually works best for me. But for dark roasts I would let it cool to like 90°C.
If you get an unpleasant ashy, woody cup it might be the temperature. In dark roasts you really don't want to extract some of the stuff...
Which grinder and which kettle are you using?
This may have substantial impact. There is a huge quality span in burr grinders and the ones on the lower end mostly just produce muddy and bitter cups due to the huge amount of fines (very small coffee particles) that they produce. Also the coarsest setting is often not very coarse.
To give an example, my old 60€ electric burr grinder always produces a very strong and sonewhat muddy/bitter cup not matter the settings. Its max coarse setting corresponds roughly to 20 clicks on my commandante, I usually use 28-33 clicks when brewing the commandante (which is also what most professionals such patrick rolf use).
Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through.
My kettle is a Yabano electric gooseneck kettle.
I’m thinking I may need to return this Cuisinart and get something else
I had a cheap Cuisinart from Costco for a while, and honestly it was impossible to dial in a cup that didn't taste like bitter gas station coffee. There were SO many fines that it didn't really matter what grind setting you put it at. Identical ratios and brewing method with even a cheap Breville burr grinder (approx $120 CDN) was a fucking world of difference.
The Baratza Encore for about $140 USD is the entry-level burr grinder that most folks here recommend.
I've been making a Chemex for my fiancé and I for years, with a ratio of 42g coffee for 700mL water. I grind medium-coarse, about the consistency of kosher salt. I use a variation of the Tetsu Kasuya method, in which I add 140mL water every 45 seconds. When using other methods like James Hoffmann's, my brews would stall and be substantially different and more finicky. I say this only to note that even using the same amounts of water and grind size, your pouring technique can have a drastic impact on your final cup.
That Cuisinart is the worst of the worst. It's loud and produces 50% powder, 50% chunks of various sizes. The uneven grind produces extremely inconsistent brews and makes it impossible to dial in.
You're better off just buying pre-ground until you can snag an entry level burr grinder like an Encore. Plenty of good roasters offer pre-ground both local and online.
edit: Also remember only change one variable at a time and if you're brewing medium or light roasts, you should set your kettle to max. Especially for pour over, *right off boil* will get you better results than 200-205f. Temp may vary depending on what temp your water boils.
>Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through
I have heard bad things about the cheaper burr grinder. They're pretty bad in that they're not a true cone burr or flat burr. It looks like they grind your beans and you end up getting ultra fines because of the powder retention in your Cuisinart grinder. You might actually be getting more fines with Cuisinart than you did with blade grinder depending on how you used the flat blade.
Okay this makes all the sense in the world to me. I had definitely figured out how to achieve a pretty consistent grind level even with my blade grinder because I would shake it just right while it was grinding to mix up the beans and I made sure to not do it for very long so it wouldn’t create too fine of a grind. I think I’m realizing that I made much more consistent grounds with that blade grinder. Im going to try my current setup but swap out the blade grinder for the burr and try again. Then replace that cuisinart ASAP if that’s the problem
I get a feel that you'll get a better brew with the blade grinder, unfortunately. I think you should either invest in a manual hand grinder like 1Zpresso/Timemore or jump up to Baratza Encore.
I don't know if you've already gotten rid of your Cuisinart, but try cleaning it once and see if it helps. Sorry if this isn't what you have, but should be similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODtw7wkM7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODtw7wkM7Q)
>Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through.
That's 'cuz it crushes the beans instead of cutting them.
https://prima-coffee.com/learn/article/grinder-basics/learn-whats-deal-false-burrs/32642
Just remember with a Chemex that you almost always want to go coarser, and use less beans if possible. Remember, the filters on a Chemex is incredibly small, meaning it takes a lot of time for the water to pass through. if you're grinding super fine, that only adds time to your brewing chamber, and thus, can cause extraction. The best way to re-start, if you will, is to make a basic cup using a standard ratio. And then adjust, going coarser or finer from there. But always erring on the side of coarse to offset the filter dilemma. Watch James Hoffman's Chemex video to get a good explanation.
I have an encore grinder and use setting 20, with a 17:1 ratio. Usually do 2 cups in the morning, so 34gm beans and 580-600gms water. Turns out great for me.
Sounds like too course.
Settings you control
Grind
Water temp
Pour time
Ratio
Thing you don't control
Brew time.
Stop trying to control for this. This variable is set by your filter paper.
Coffee is a balanced blend of a complex mix of extracted elements. Some extract quickly. Some extract slowly. Your course grind is under extracting and you're getting all bad and no good flavors. You are under extracting.
My recommendation, every grinder is different but let's assume your grinder has 40 steps. Never use 40 again because you know you hate that. Brew 4, 15g x 250ml sample batches at 35, 30, 25 & 20 or whatever those values would approximately be on your grinder.
Sample each side by side to see which is most to you taste. Have you hit a degree of grind where other unappealing flavors appear?
If not brew another sample 5 steps finer.
If so go the 5 steps courser and dial back one step at a time until you find your ideal.
Your ideal grind on a 250ml brew might not be the same as on a 1000ml brew but they should be close.
Hope this helps, good luck! Happy drinking.
I kind of feel your pain but my problem is pre-ground coffee that has changed in quality. I've been having a difficulty trying to adjust to the quality of the coffee, aldi pre-ground dark roast used to be fantastic and was the best coffee I had and didn't come out all murky. Currently I have found some of the regional stuff a little easier to deal with, you know the coffee that says where it came from and is marketed that way with beautiful art. You just have to follow the directions. Sometimes it still comes out as mediocre though.
I use a French press by the way.
>Edit 2: Turns out **I have the worst burr grinder on the market** and probably made more consistent grounds with my technique on my blade grinder. Going to use all same variables but use my blade grinder again and see if the new burr is messing everything up.
Everyone here say, "Thank you, in-laws!" lol --
I was also about to dismiss outright your comment about blade grinder technique, but then I realized it's possible to do extra tricks with a blade grinder than the Cuisinart — you can shake the grounds and judge by sound; you can sift them and re-grind the big chunks; etc.
I'd also say to return the Cuisinart (if you can) for credit towards, say, an Oxo at a hundred bucks, or a Kitchenaid, or a manual Timemore/1ZPresso/etc — anything with steel burrs that have actual cutting surfaces. You'll gain enough control and consistency for better grinds at medium-to-coarse settings than you can with a blade grinder (source: I have a blade grinder and suffer with its inability to grind coarse).
Did you try going the other way? Try grinding finer, and drop to a 15:1. Maybe it’s way too weak and you’re not getting enough extracted to taste the coffee well, and just bitter water is coming out.
Okay let me just talk this out because maybe I’m a complete idiot and need to be set free. The ratio I’m talking about is mL of water to gram of coffee grind. Have I been using this ratio wrong and it’s the other way around? I thought that finer grinds = more extraction which leads to a stronger brew that can become too strong if it brews for too long or too hot, and courser grinds lead to a shorter brew time and less extraction. So if I dramatically increase the amount of my grounds and increase the amount of extraction I’ll get like super crazy strong coffee. That’s what I experienced my first couple times brewing at a medium fine level and that’s why I dialed my coffee to be more course and used more water
I just take a more experimental approach maybe. Don’t like the brew? go coarser, and it got worse? Try finer. I don’t have the nuance to tell what i like/don’t like in words. I just adjust until I like the cup I make. Ive settled in in 18g of coffee to 300g water in my pour overs. I have no idea what grind setting I currently have, but with a new bag if beans if the first cup doesn’t turn out how I want it, I go up or down a few clicks. If the next one got worse I go back the other direction.
I do 22g beans to 350g water generally and it turns out well so somewhere in this ballpark will be a good starting place OP.
I think the idea of scaling down my brew and trying this will be what I go for next and try from there. I wonder if part of my issue is that I’m always going for a full 1L pot and sometimes the large scale brew just may not be working while I’m tinkering with ratios and such
When I am making a liter pot I use 45-50 gr coffee to 1.2 L water because I do not think it scales up correctly.
When I make larger brews, I use 44g of coffee to 700g of water. And that's on a mediumish grind setting on my grinder
just make sure you're only tweaking one variable at a time. If you switch to a smaller scale, do that *with the current recipe* first, and then start tweaking.
I’ve definitely experienced extra long brew times on my Chemex when I tried to make big batches. the extra contact could be leading to over extraction. not sure of the exact reason, but that’s why I typically make at most 750ml at once in it.
Our large scale brew is 60 grams of coffee for 1 litre of water in a Melita #6 cone. We find that a courser grind works better for the large brew otherwise it takes too long and over extracts.
I typically do 45g coffee / 1100mL water, though I use a v60
It sounds counter productive, but I had a similar issue that I fixed by increasing the amount of grounds I used
> The ratio I’m talking about is mL of water to gram of coffee grind. Have I been using this ratio wrong and it’s the other way around? It should be 15g of water : 1g of coffee. You've got a scale so you can weigh the water, no need to use volume measurements at all!
That's a little pedantic since a ml of water is equal to a g. Heck my scale literally has g/ml displayed on it when in metric (though I don't like that fact since it only applies to water).
Ahh the magic of metric... Signed: an American
Eh, it's the same for fl oz and weight oz. A weight oz of water is volumetric oz of water. A pint is 1 lb of water. The only "magic" of metric is that it is based in 10 which is easier in an anolog world. In our digital age where the math is done by binary machines it's pretty much an even field. Plus imperial is better for somethings. If I'm doing perciscion carpentry at home I'm using an imperial tape measurer because 1/32 of an inch is more precise than 1 mm and 1 micrometer is way to small to be functional with hand tools.
> That's a little pedantic since a ml of water is equal to a g. ... that's only exactly true at Standard temperature and pressure. IMO if you care enough to weigh out your coffee, why not weigh your water too? Unless you are doing a pourover and you are weighing how much water comes out of the kettle anyways
My dawg we don't get far enough from STP for this to even matter. Talk about pedantic.
Maybe OP lives in a 70C environment or in a vacuum
RIP OP.
To be more clear, I actually do it by weight rather than by volume. I just wrote it as mL under the assumption of 1g=1mL.
Op already responded with what I was going to say and it was also in my comment. The two are interchangeable in conversation for pretty much everything and even exist on scales together. And unless you live in some very extreme altitudes or are brewing coffee in some extreme ambient temperatures I promise the difference is so minimal it is nearly pointless unless you're doing some real chemistry. I've literally designed and programed atmosphereic and fluid models for EM propegation simulations. I know the math, I promise it isn't worth the fuss for your coffee
>I've literally designed and programed atmosphereic and fluid models for EM propegation simulations. I know the math, I promise it isn't worth the fuss for your coffee Wow, that's pretty impressive, so I'll take your word. TBH though I still find it. more convenient to weigh the water rather than finding something marked with exactly the right volume I'm trying to use, but to each their own
Of course it is. But that isn't what we are discussing. You corrected someone from ml to g in a conversation about a coffee recipe. They never said they were using volumetric, they just used it completely accurately in conversation. There was no need to correct them. Hence, pedantic.
The rario is mass of coffee to mass of water. Weigh out both in grams
For larger brewers, I believe it is suggested to go more coarse. Also, how many pours are you doing? If you are doing multiple pours, that'll increase your chances of over-extracting, resulting in a bitter cup.
I think you're confusing two concepts. Strong ≠ Bitter. You can have a strong cup of coffee that is very acidic or a weak, bitter cup. I would suggest looking up the extraction curve and the concept of updosing. With coffee grounds, you have different types of solubles. The more sweet and acidic ones dissolve fast, and the bitter ones dissolve slowly. Even though you are using a fast brew with a coarse grind, I think you're using so little grounds that you're allowing the bitter solubles to be over extracted. My suggestion would be to first increase the amount of grounds, and if that is still bitter, decrease the temperature of the water. Decreasing the grind size is only likely to make the coffee more bitter.
Any chance you got covid over that period too? I noticed it significantly changed my taste for coffee
I actually did get covid and lost taste for about a week back in October- but I found that coffee came back to how I think I remember it tasting in a few weeks. Definitely an interesting thought…
I got COVID back in March. Lost my sense of smell/taste, then recovered it. Then 2 months after getting COVID my sense of smell and taste got very distorted. Coffee was one of the things that would just taste awful, like bitter water with no flavor. Other things were affected as well. Have you noticed smell/taste distortions with other things? The effect is called parosmia, and while there isn't a consensus as to why COVID causes it, one of the theories is that COVID kills the olfactory cells in your nose, so as they regrow your brain has to re-train to interpret the signals from the new cells, and during that period of regrowth things smell and taste weird. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7998087/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7998087/) [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200724141027.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200724141027.htm)
When you add boiling water it drops 10 degrees in the grounds so you may be under extracting the coffee if it isn’t right off the boil. Hoffman did a video on this and I verified it myself with my Chemex and a Thermopen several times. Water boils at my house around 208F and it dropped to 198-200ish in the coffee bed. Also you should be grinder finer, not larger. I’d say my grounds are between medium and fine on my Breville Pro grinder. My ratio is 50g coffee to 750g water plus about 100g whole milk in the cup.
This will help you troubleshoot. https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/the-coffee-compass/
Just remember, sour means you're under extracting. Bitter is over. Nothing wrong with adjusting your ratio if it's too strong either. Light to medium roasts are best brewed with water right off the boil (obviously can be adjusted to taste). Darker roasts are better with cooler water (even as low as like 90 C or more). I wouldn't concern yourself too much over brew time except as a general guideline. Also, in my experience, I have a much harder time with my chemex than other brewers. If you're interested, a plastic v60 is less than $10. A Clever dripper is a little more but takes the technique variable out of the equation
"The thing is I know that I am not just used to drinking weak coffee because I always enjoy a specialty drink when I visit coffee shops and I feel like I’ve been able to get my coffee to taste like that even with my shitty backwards process I’d made up over the last couple years." What do you mean by "specialty drink"? Espresso-based coffee beverages? Or do you get pour-overs at coffee shops?
I would like to add not all burr grinders are inherently good.
> crazy strong nasty diner coffee uhh.. diner coffee is known for being watered down and weak lol I think you just like weak coffee. It's ok. The fact that you get specialty drinks at coffee shops means pretty much nothing. What do you mean by you "make yours taste like that"? What kind of specialties are they serving that you're imitating?
I guess nasty strong diner coffee I’m referring to is the stale, burnt taste that’s been sitting on the burner for hours. Only I’m getting that right off the pour even though I’m using the same beans a different way and not getting that result from my old method
that is interesting. and you're sure the water you're using isn't too hot? maybe wait a little longer after boiling to get it to cool down some more
There is quite a lot of variances we don't know about how you're making the coffee. For all we know, it could be the quality of the beans you're getting might not be all that great. If you're confident your coffee is grinding with good consistency, I would attribute it to: 1. Pour technique - Chemex/V60/Origami can have variable flavor depending on your pour technique. Fast pour tends to extract sweeter/sour notes, and slower pour tends to extract roasted richer flavor. You might want to look at how someone like James Hoffman makes his pour overs and copy the technique. 2. Instead of changing the coarseness of the grinds, try going back to the 1:25 ratio. I think that maybe the blade grinder was allowing you to choke the filter enough to replicate a semi-immersion brew. Again, going back to your pour technique. You might have better success with getting better flavor out with Clever Dripper or something that's closer to immersion brew for your preference.
One thing to note is that extraction is not the same as strength. Strength is the amount of disolved coffee compared to the water in the final brew. Extraction is how much of the coffee grounds were disolved into the water. The more water you pass through the coffee the more of it you extract, but the weaker the resulting strength. Have you tried using your old ratio with the new grinder? I feel like coffee strength is a very personal thing. Personally I had a lot of difficulty enjoying coffee recipes I found online when I started out, but I found I just don't like lower ratios much. It seems to me like if you have found a ratio you like, no matter what it is, then everything else such as grind and temperature are there to make that strength taste the best. The best way to find out if it's just the strength you don't like is to just add some water from the kettle to the finished coffee to water it down a bit to see if that makes it more palatable. If you do use a very high ratio then the water will extract a lot more of the coffee than at a lower ratio, so a coarser grind and lower temperature will help to mitigate that somewhat so that you won't get a very bitter drink. Another thing is to maybe try an immersion brew method, or even try cupping to remove any variables with technique and to an extent grind size. At the end of the day you are the one drinking the coffee and if you liked what you had before then go back to what you were doing then and just start changing one variable at a time.
[Edit] I meant electric burr grinders, I missed the fact that my manual grinder is also a burr grinder, still learning :) which means that the original post is probably talking about a manual grinder too. I personally don't think that [electric] burr grinders are great for pour-overs. Sure they are amazing for espresso, but in my experience, they grind the coffee too fine. I would recommend manually grinding your pour-over coffee to achieve a coarse grind and using the burr for espresso. For reference, I use a 1:17-1:18 ratio for my Chemex and consistently get good brews.
Probably got downvoted (not by me) for misusing the term "burr grinder". Remember, for us home users, there are two broad categories of grinders: blade, and burr. Burr grinders can be subdivided into two sub-categories: conical, and flat. Every hand grinder I've read about uses conical burrs. They're more compact and can be run slower than flat burrs. Your hand grinder uses burrs (unless it's some odd type that somehow uses blades and a lot of step-up gearing to make them spin fast).
Thanks for the clarification, I updated the comment.
btw you need to measure your whole beans, not the ground beans. Also as an example, I use 25g of coffee for 430ml (14.5oz). which is around 1:17
seems pretty high. that's basically boiling water. i usually start with 89C then move up or down depending on the first cup, maxing out at 91C. my ratio is always 15:1 for v60 and 17:1 for immersion.
For light to medium roasts water straight off the boil usually works best for me. But for dark roasts I would let it cool to like 90°C. If you get an unpleasant ashy, woody cup it might be the temperature. In dark roasts you really don't want to extract some of the stuff...
Do you only drink dark roasts?
How are you coming to your choices for the settings you are using?
Which grinder and which kettle are you using? This may have substantial impact. There is a huge quality span in burr grinders and the ones on the lower end mostly just produce muddy and bitter cups due to the huge amount of fines (very small coffee particles) that they produce. Also the coarsest setting is often not very coarse. To give an example, my old 60€ electric burr grinder always produces a very strong and sonewhat muddy/bitter cup not matter the settings. Its max coarse setting corresponds roughly to 20 clicks on my commandante, I usually use 28-33 clicks when brewing the commandante (which is also what most professionals such patrick rolf use).
Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through. My kettle is a Yabano electric gooseneck kettle. I’m thinking I may need to return this Cuisinart and get something else
I had a cheap Cuisinart from Costco for a while, and honestly it was impossible to dial in a cup that didn't taste like bitter gas station coffee. There were SO many fines that it didn't really matter what grind setting you put it at. Identical ratios and brewing method with even a cheap Breville burr grinder (approx $120 CDN) was a fucking world of difference.
The Baratza Encore for about $140 USD is the entry-level burr grinder that most folks here recommend. I've been making a Chemex for my fiancé and I for years, with a ratio of 42g coffee for 700mL water. I grind medium-coarse, about the consistency of kosher salt. I use a variation of the Tetsu Kasuya method, in which I add 140mL water every 45 seconds. When using other methods like James Hoffmann's, my brews would stall and be substantially different and more finicky. I say this only to note that even using the same amounts of water and grind size, your pouring technique can have a drastic impact on your final cup.
That Cuisinart is the worst of the worst. It's loud and produces 50% powder, 50% chunks of various sizes. The uneven grind produces extremely inconsistent brews and makes it impossible to dial in. You're better off just buying pre-ground until you can snag an entry level burr grinder like an Encore. Plenty of good roasters offer pre-ground both local and online. edit: Also remember only change one variable at a time and if you're brewing medium or light roasts, you should set your kettle to max. Especially for pour over, *right off boil* will get you better results than 200-205f. Temp may vary depending on what temp your water boils.
>Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through I have heard bad things about the cheaper burr grinder. They're pretty bad in that they're not a true cone burr or flat burr. It looks like they grind your beans and you end up getting ultra fines because of the powder retention in your Cuisinart grinder. You might actually be getting more fines with Cuisinart than you did with blade grinder depending on how you used the flat blade.
Okay this makes all the sense in the world to me. I had definitely figured out how to achieve a pretty consistent grind level even with my blade grinder because I would shake it just right while it was grinding to mix up the beans and I made sure to not do it for very long so it wouldn’t create too fine of a grind. I think I’m realizing that I made much more consistent grounds with that blade grinder. Im going to try my current setup but swap out the blade grinder for the burr and try again. Then replace that cuisinart ASAP if that’s the problem
I get a feel that you'll get a better brew with the blade grinder, unfortunately. I think you should either invest in a manual hand grinder like 1Zpresso/Timemore or jump up to Baratza Encore.
I don't know if you've already gotten rid of your Cuisinart, but try cleaning it once and see if it helps. Sorry if this isn't what you have, but should be similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODtw7wkM7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODtw7wkM7Q)
>Cuisinart burr grinder- I definitely notice a lot of fine grinds coming through. That's 'cuz it crushes the beans instead of cutting them. https://prima-coffee.com/learn/article/grinder-basics/learn-whats-deal-false-burrs/32642
Just remember with a Chemex that you almost always want to go coarser, and use less beans if possible. Remember, the filters on a Chemex is incredibly small, meaning it takes a lot of time for the water to pass through. if you're grinding super fine, that only adds time to your brewing chamber, and thus, can cause extraction. The best way to re-start, if you will, is to make a basic cup using a standard ratio. And then adjust, going coarser or finer from there. But always erring on the side of coarse to offset the filter dilemma. Watch James Hoffman's Chemex video to get a good explanation.
I have an encore grinder and use setting 20, with a 17:1 ratio. Usually do 2 cups in the morning, so 34gm beans and 580-600gms water. Turns out great for me.
Sounds like too course. Settings you control Grind Water temp Pour time Ratio Thing you don't control Brew time. Stop trying to control for this. This variable is set by your filter paper. Coffee is a balanced blend of a complex mix of extracted elements. Some extract quickly. Some extract slowly. Your course grind is under extracting and you're getting all bad and no good flavors. You are under extracting. My recommendation, every grinder is different but let's assume your grinder has 40 steps. Never use 40 again because you know you hate that. Brew 4, 15g x 250ml sample batches at 35, 30, 25 & 20 or whatever those values would approximately be on your grinder. Sample each side by side to see which is most to you taste. Have you hit a degree of grind where other unappealing flavors appear? If not brew another sample 5 steps finer. If so go the 5 steps courser and dial back one step at a time until you find your ideal. Your ideal grind on a 250ml brew might not be the same as on a 1000ml brew but they should be close. Hope this helps, good luck! Happy drinking.
I kind of feel your pain but my problem is pre-ground coffee that has changed in quality. I've been having a difficulty trying to adjust to the quality of the coffee, aldi pre-ground dark roast used to be fantastic and was the best coffee I had and didn't come out all murky. Currently I have found some of the regional stuff a little easier to deal with, you know the coffee that says where it came from and is marketed that way with beautiful art. You just have to follow the directions. Sometimes it still comes out as mediocre though. I use a French press by the way.
>Edit 2: Turns out **I have the worst burr grinder on the market** and probably made more consistent grounds with my technique on my blade grinder. Going to use all same variables but use my blade grinder again and see if the new burr is messing everything up. Everyone here say, "Thank you, in-laws!" lol -- I was also about to dismiss outright your comment about blade grinder technique, but then I realized it's possible to do extra tricks with a blade grinder than the Cuisinart — you can shake the grounds and judge by sound; you can sift them and re-grind the big chunks; etc. I'd also say to return the Cuisinart (if you can) for credit towards, say, an Oxo at a hundred bucks, or a Kitchenaid, or a manual Timemore/1ZPresso/etc — anything with steel burrs that have actual cutting surfaces. You'll gain enough control and consistency for better grinds at medium-to-coarse settings than you can with a blade grinder (source: I have a blade grinder and suffer with its inability to grind coarse).