Starting your morning with a bitter cup of coffee can quickly ruin your mood. Your coffee should be a burst of flavor — not an overwhelming dose of bitterness. So, what are the best ways to avoid a bitter cup of coffee?
To avoid a bitter cup of coffee, you’ll need to balance the taste with minor adjustments to your brewing technique. You may need to cut down your brewing time or let your water cool down. Using less water and grinding your beans more coarsely can also eliminate bitterness.
Some amount of bitterness is typical in coffee, but if you make a mistake when brewing, the bitterness can be overpowering. Let’s get into the technicalities and find out why your coffee is turning out bitter so that you can make amends and get back to enjoying a delightful cup of joe.
What Are the Causes of Bitter Coffee?

Bitter coffee is normally caused by bad beans or improper brewing. Low-quality coffee simply tastes bitter. If you buy low-grade robusta species or super dark roast beans, your coffee is bound to be bitter.
But if you always buy good beans, yet your coffee is still bitter, the problem could be on your end. Bitter coffee is often the result of over-extracted coffee. Here’s how over-extracted coffee comes about:
Your Grounds Are Too Fine
The water extracts flavors from a smaller coffee ground faster than a bigger ground. Therefore, if you’re using coffee grounds that are too fine, they’ll release all their balanced flavors and move on to the icky stuff.
You Brewed the Grounds Too Long
Coffee has a sweet spot where it tastes just right, and if you exceed it, that’s when the extra bitter flavors emerge. This is especially common with a French press (on Amazon). You may have waited too long to press down the plunger, meaning the coffee continued to extract and became even more bitter.
Your Water Is Too Hot
The National Coffee Association states that the best temperature for making balanced coffee is between 195°F and 205°F. If the water gets any hotter, over-extraction quickly occurs, and your coffee inevitably becomes bitter.
You Used Too Much Water
If you mess up your coffee-to-water ratio and use too much water, each individual coffee ground gets access to more water than required, so it extracts more than is ideal.
What Does Over-Extracted Mean?
The term “over-extracted” means that you’ve taken too much of the soluble flavors out of your coffee. The outcome of this level of extraction is the beans getting over-brewed and starting to give off a bitter taste.
Fine vs. Coarse Grind: Which Is Best?
A fine grind has a fine, sand-like appearance. You can’t see the individual pieces, but when you hold them between your fingertips, you can feel them. This grind is mainly for espresso. Since making espresso depends on the pressure of water passing through the coffee in a few seconds, a fine grind is more suitable.
A coarse grind, on the other hand, has the same consistency as granulated sugar. This grind size is perfect for cafetieres and requires a four-minute brew time for the ideal extraction.
Your coffee grind greatly impacts the number of flavor compounds let out into your brew, offering you an entirely different tasting cup of coffee. If your beans are too finely ground, they’ll be over-extracted, resulting in a bitter cup of coffee. The reverse is also true.
The grind is vital to the final taste of your coffee because you usually brew with water between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes the coffee beans to give off their flavor. If your grind is too fine, you lose some of the flavors when your grinder cuts them up.
In contrast, if your ground is too coarse, it will be under-extracted, creating a weak-tasting cup of coffee. This mainly occurs because the water has trouble flowing through the coffee particles, taking longer to extract flavor.
The choice between coarse or fine grind depends on the type of machine you use. With espresso machines, go for a finer grind, but pick a more coarse grind with drip brewers.
All things considered, the best grind for your brew is medium-fine, which provides even extraction as well as great tasting flavors.
How Much Coffee and Water Should I Use?

Determining your coffee-to-water ratio is a lot easier if you measure accurately using a kitchen scale (on Amazon). These ratios usually go with the weight in grams and often boil down to your preferred style of coffee. In a nutshell:
- When brewing regular coffee, use a 1:15 ratio, meaning 1 part coffee grounds for 15 parts water. You can’t go wrong using 30 grams of coarse coffee grounds for 450 grams (16 oz.) of water, whether you prefer black or white.
- If you’re brewing immersion coffee like the French press or Aeropress method, aim for a 1:14 ratio or 35 grams of coffee for 500 grams (18 oz.) of water.
- If you’ve recently started enjoying pour-over coffee at home and only have a low-grade grinder, it would be best to use a medium grind setting and a 1:15 ratio.
- If you’re a pro home barista with a sophisticated grinder, and you get your coffee beans from a specialty coffee roaster, try out a wider ratio like 1:16 or 1:17.
Good vs. Bad Bitterness
Let’s face it: There will always be a tiny amount of bitterness in coffee, even with specialty-grade beans — and that’s a good thing.
Extremely bitter coffee is harsh on the taste buds, while a light, balanced bitterness in your coffee forms a layer of deep flavors that the brighter tasting notes stand on. It also yields interesting flavors that would otherwise be impossible.
The following are some flavor note examples of what good bitterness can taste like:
- Warm and compounded like chestnut
- Deep and creamy, like dark chocolate
- Bitter-sweet like a pineapple