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I was grinding my beans way too fine for my drip machine.
My coffee tasted bitter for months. A friend in Portland watched me make a pot and said, 'Your grounds look like dust, man.' What grind setting do you use for a basic auto-drip?
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murphy.ruby2mo ago
Your grounds look like dust" is the universal sign you've gone too far. I read a piece from a roaster who said for auto-drip, you want it to look like coarse sand, not powdered sugar. If your coffee is bitter, that's a classic sign of over-extraction from too fine a grind. I aim for a texture like kosher salt. It made a huge difference when I stopped using the "espresso" setting by mistake.
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alex8092mo ago
It's funny how many problems come from using the wrong setting by default. My old blender had a "liquefy" button that turned everything to soup until I figured out out. We get used to the wrong tools because we don't question the labels.
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emerydixon1mo ago
Oh that's such a good point. We just trust the labels on things, like "espresso" must mean "make good coffee," right? I totally agree with what @murphy.ruby said about the grind size, it's the same idea. My machine had a "strong" button that just made it bitter until I learned it was over-extracting. It's amazing how much better things work when you learn what the settings actually do instead of just picking the one that sounds right.
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