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Why does my coffee taste wrong?

Almost every bad cup comes down to a handful of causes, and the fix is usually one change at a time. Tell it how you brew and what tastes off, and it gives you the most likely cause, the first thing to change, and what to try next if that does not do it.

Check the beans first. Coffee needs roughly 4 to 14 days of rest after the roast date. Beans that are too fresh taste gassy and uneven; beans more than a couple of months past roast taste flat and dull. If your beans are outside that window, fix that before chasing your technique.

The one-change rule

When a cup tastes wrong it is tempting to change three things at once. Do not. Change one variable, brew again, and taste. If you change grind, ratio, and temperature together you will never learn which one mattered, and you cannot repeat your good cups. Grind size is almost always the most powerful single lever, so start there.

Sour means under, bitter means over

The single most useful idea in coffee: sour, sharp, or empty usually means the coffee is under-extracted — you did not pull enough out of the grounds. Harsh, bitter, or drying usually means over-extracted — you pulled too much. Grinding finer, brewing hotter, and brewing longer all push extraction up. Grinding coarser, cooler, and shorter pull it down. The group is a good place to sanity-check a cup when you are stuck between the two.