Your Coffee Always Smells: Expert Explains the Biggest Brewing Mistakes

If you want to make The best cup of coffee possible Every morning, there are a few things you should keep in mind. It’s not the brand of coffee you use, nor how you prepare it. There are actually a variety of aspects of your morning beverage that you should consider before serving it hot for the day. This includes, believe it or not, doing things like giving it a sniff.

I recently spoke to Sarina Prabhasi, who founded Bonnie’s womb And a trio of coffee shops in northern Manhattan. The mission was to root out simple mistakes people ignore when brewing coffee at home.

Buunni specializes in ethically sourced beans from growing regions across Ethiopia, where the coffee tends to be fruity, floral and sometimes fragrant, like tea. Barabasi moved with her husband and business partner from Ethiopia, bringing the country’s spirit of hospitality and quality coffee with them. The team also creates custom blends with beans selected from around the world.

As a junior who serves on the Board of Directors for the Specialty Coffee Association, Prabasi has provided some insight into how to make simple tweaks for a better cup of coffee. She’s also not one to sweat the small things. “You know, we take coffee seriously, but we don’t want to take it ourselves also Seriously, Prabasi said: So it has to be something fun, otherwise, why would you do it? “

1. Wash the coffee maker often using detergent

Get rid of the soap for your coffee pot and Pour immersion beer It may seem like questionable advice. In fact, your coffee equipment doesn’t need to be scrubbed every time you use it. Even small layers of residue from aromatic dish soap or laundry detergent will leave you with a Sudsy and Subpar pot of coffee.

“It really stays in there; it can mess with the flavor, and so, usually a good rinse with super hot water is enough for black coffee,” Brabasi said. Oils from beans may build up over time, so fragrance-free dish soap comes in handy for occasional deep cleans. A simple rinse with hot water will be more than enough for daily use. Save yourself time and avoid any unwanted essence of “soap scum” interrupting your single asset notes Sidama Natural Roast.

2. Buy more coffee than you can brew fresh

Buying in bulk can save time and money at the grocery store but can have disappointing results for coffee lovers. Buying smaller quantities of beans will help avoid drinking flat, stale coffee, especially for medium drinkers and families with two or one person. Probasi told us that you’ll know the coffee was old because it “can taste like a shade of itself.”

The roaster recommends looking for Roast date on coffee label Within one month or ideally within two weeks. (Keep in mind that the Best Buy date is different and is not an indicator of freshness.) If you don’t like grinding at home, your roast date should be on the fresh side.

All that said, you don’t need to panic about flavor dropping like a time bomb in the cupboard. “Every day doesn’t mean after I’ve lost the freshness, but after a couple of weeks, I’d say it starts to go down,” Prabasi said. Coffee storage In an airtight container, but avoid a humid refrigerator with a large number of odors that can adhere to the beans.

3. Adjust more than one thing at a time

You can find online tutorials recommending brewers, scales, shakers, water filters, grinders, and various techniques for making the perfect cup. Experimentation is key to crafting your favorite drink but only if you start with the basics. “So, just adjust the water at first,” Prabasi said.

If you don’t have it Kitchen scalethe roaster told us that the rule of thumb would start with 2 tablespoons of ground coffee per cup of water. The finer the grind, the stronger your coffee will taste, you’ll need to adjust your grounds to water ratio accordingly. If that seems too weak or too strong, adjust by adding more or less coffee at the same grind level.

Beyond the basics, you can get creative. “If your coffee is too acidic, you might prefer a dark roast,” Brabasi said. Coffee too bitter? You can adjust the type of grill by purchasing a level down, such as dark to medium or medium to light. “If you get an East African coffee, maybe try one from South America, you know, like Switch (It) around,” she said. Changing a single item at once ensures that you know which step affected the outcome for better or worse.

4. Take water directly from the tap

Filling your coffee pot with tap water will result in less than ideal flavors. Filtered water, for most of us, will make a huge difference in the flavor of your final coffee. Tap water is often full of byproducts that can easily be filtered out at home Water filtration system.

Almost all of the water you get from your tap in the United States is disinfected with low levels of chlorine. The EPA reports that One in five people drink chloramineA backup disinfectant made from chlorine and ammonia, to kill harmful viruses and bacteria such as salmonella. These chemicals make sure we don’t get sick, but will change the taste and smell of tap water. Chloramines are also known to leach lead and copper from pipes, byproducts that can affect even the most carefully prepared coffee.

5. Forget about stopping and smelling the coffee

The smell can be a dead giveaway that your coffee has been cut. Prabhasi explains that you should open a bag of beans or ground coffee immediately and be able to smell the roasted coffee. Aroma is a key indicator of flavour. No smell means a serious lack of taste.

Stale coffee can taste muddy or flat and lack any complex tasting notes that a bag would list on its label, Brabasi said. “That’s why I think about the coffee profession, and a lot of what we do is coffee tasting,” she said. “From farm to café, every step of the way the coffee or coffee, in our vernacular, is tasted.”

Old coffee is unlikely to make you sick, so there’s no need to throw it away. However, you may want to switch from taking black coffee. Making iced coffee is a simple way to mask the lack of tasting notes. Using an infused brewer also allows you to steep longer grounds to add a little more flavor after the coffee is boring.

6. Ignore the organic label

You can feel many brands of coffee in the grocery store. To help dig into the masses, Prabasi explains that the organic coffee label is a sign of quality that’s important for coffee.

“If I can, I think about coffee and tea, organic is really important because coffee and tea crops, especially from large farms, tend to be over-filtered,” Prabasi said. Pesticides are sprayed directly on the coffee cherry, and the coffee is nothing like an apple you can wash or a banana you peel before eating. Tea leaves go through a similar process where nothing on the leaves is left in the mug.

The café owner explained that she doesn’t think coffee has to be expensive to be considered “good.” Great coffee made for a variety of budgets. “I think the care that goes into it and some thought about the care that goes into getting it, baking it, or just serving it, I would look for those things,” Prabasi said. The organic label is a useful place to start.

7. Always take your coffee “to go”

Even if you don’t think of coffee purely as a fuel, many of us treat coffee simply as fuel. take Coffee in a travel mug Drinking as part of commuting is not inherently a problem. Instead, Prabasi invites coffee drinkers to take advantage of any time and ability to savor a cup of coffee. In contrast to the grab-and-go culture in the United States, drinking coffee in Ethiopia is an opportunity to slow down and connect with people you care about. “I like to say — like, I’ve lived in Ethiopia for eight years — I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘I’ll have coffee,'” Barabasi said. “It was always, ‘Let’s have coffee. Do we have coffee?'”

Even taking an extra 10 minutes to grab a drink at a coffee shop instead of ordering cup to cup can change the energy of a hectic morning. “I think there are a lot of rituals around coffee and how one enjoys it,” Prabasi said. Taking the time to create your own ritual, whether at home or at a local store, can help you savor all that coffee has to offer beyond the caffeine content.

For more coffee, here How to read coffee labels and The best travel mugs of 2025, tested by CNET.