Why is Coffee Sour (Not Light Roast) and How to Fix It to Make It Taste Good

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Nothing ruins a morning like a sour cup of coffee. It’s disgusting! When your coffee tastes sour, it can really mess up the flavors in your cup. It’s not exactly what you need when you’re looking for a boost in the morning. However, sour coffee isn’t something you have to put up with. There are some easy fixes for it.

Why is Coffee Sour (Not Light Roast) and How to Fix It to Make It Taste Good

Why is coffee sour?

There are two main reasons why your coffee might taste sour:

  1. Poor quality coffee beans: If the coffee beans are not roasted enough (underroasted), the coffee will taste grassy and sour, or if the coffee beans are old and rotten. The coffee will taste very sour, similar to lemon.
  2. Wrong way to brew coffee: But most of the time. the problem is caused by the way the coffee is brewed. So, try to make a few changes to your brewing method, it may improve the taste of your coffee.

Most sour coffee is caused by insufficient extraction of coffee. Sour coffee is usually caused by insufficient extraction of coffee, meaning the coffee beans were not brewed long enough, so other flavors that would counteract the sour taste were not fully extracted.

The main reason why homemade coffee is often sour is because it is not extracted properly.

1. Your coffee beans are ground too coarsely. Finely ground coffee extracts faster, but coarsely ground coffee allows water to penetrate more slowly because the coffee particles are larger (that’s science). Grinding your coffee too coarsely can mean that individual coffee particles aren’t exposed to water long enough to extract a balanced amount of flavor.

2. Your brew time is too short . You want to brew your coffee long enough to extract the other flavors to reduce acidity and get a well-rounded taste. If you’re using a French press, you may be depressing the filter too soon. Or if you’re using a four-over, you may be pouring water too quickly, causing the water to flow through the coffee too quickly.

3. Your water is too cold. It has been proven that the ideal water temperature for brewing coffee is between 90.5-96.1 degrees Celsius. If the โปรโมชั่น ufabet temperature is lower than that, the water will be slower to extract the good flavors from the coffee, resulting in insufficient extraction, which is one reason why the coffee tastes sour.

4. You’re using too little water. The coffee-to-water ratio is very important. If you don’t use enough water for each part of the ground coffee to extract the right balance of flavors, the result is an under-extracted coffee, also known as sour coffee.

A cup of coffee may taste great, but when you switch to fresh coffee beans, even after following the same process, the taste may become more acidic. Don’t worry, that’s what raw food is like! Remember, acidic coffee is caused by insufficient extraction, so our goal is to extract more. Here are some barista-inspired ways to up the extraction to solve your acidic coffee problem.

How to solve the problem of sour coffee

1. Try grinding your coffee beans a finer (medium) grind. Finer ground coffee extracts its full flavor faster, even if you don’t change anything else in your brewing method. The finer grind alone slows down the flow of water in the four-over method, which increases the brew time.

2. Increase the brewing time. There are several ways you can do this. If you’re using an immersion coffee maker, such as a French press, simply increase the brewing time by 20 seconds before depressing the filter. If you’re using a pour over, you can slow down the brewing process or grind the coffee finer to slow down the flow of water.

3. Check the water temperature. Remember, the ideal temperature is between 90.5-96.1 degrees Celsius. If you live in a high-altitude area where water boils at around 195 degrees Fahrenheit, you should use the water immediately after it boils to prevent the temperature from dropping.

4. Add a little more water . Adding more water means that each coffee bean has more water to extract flavor, making extraction easier. If you’re making pour-over coffee, adding more water will also increase the brewing time, because it takes more time to pour the water.

It’s best to try fixing one problem at a time, and make small changes only. Changing too much can lead to the opposite problem: over-extraction, which can result in bitter or astringent coffee.