How to Get Rid of Coffee Sourness

Have you ever wondered how to solve this coffee sourness problem that most of us experience sometimes? We all drink coffee, sometimes we buy it or we prepare them by ourselves. However, when you prepare your coffee, just one small mistake can make your coffee sour, which in turn can ruin your morning coffee. In this article, you will find out how to get rid of the sour taste in your coffee and other things that might be helpful like what causes your coffee to be sour.

How to Know If Your Coffee Is Sour

Did you know that the human tongue has more than 2.000 taste buds on it? These taste buds help us to perceive the taste of the thing we eat. These taste buds can be divided into 5 categories: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami.

You can taste sour things with the back edges of your tongue. If you think your coffee is sour, just take a sip from it try to determine if your coffee tastes sour or not with the help of the back of your tongue.

What Makes Coffee Sour?

In general, sour coffee results from bad beans or bad brewing. If your beans are under-roasted, they probably taste sour and grassy. On the other hand, if they are old or stale, their flavor will be sharp and lemony. However, if your beans are fine and your coffee is too sour, you may have to make some adjustments to your brewing methods.

As we said earlier, sourness in your coffee might be the result of under-extracted coffee. In this part of the article, we listed why your beans are under-extracted.

You Grind Your Beans Too Coarsely

Although fine grounds extract quickly, large ones can take longer because it takes longer for the water to get into the center of each particle. Therefore, coarsely ground coffee beans mean not every particle is getting a balanced extraction.

Your Brew Time Is Too Short

When you brew your coffee, you should bring out the flavors that can calm down the acids and can bring out the flavor. Plunging the filter down too early when using a French press or pouring the water too fast when using a pour-over cone may be responsible for short brew time. If you pay attention to your brew time next time, you can fix the sour coffee problem.

Your Water Is Too Cold

If you are wondering what temperature is the best for brewing coffee, the answer is between 195 and 205 degrees. If your water is below these temperatures, your coffee will not bring out the good stuff as quickly as it needs to, which may lead to sour coffee.

You Don’t Use Enough Water

One of the most important things when preparing a coffee is the coffee to water ratio. Therefore, If you don’t use the right amount of water you need to use, you might get sour coffee or sour espresso.

How to Fix Coffee Sourness

Now that you have learned what makes your coffee sour, now it is time to learn how to fix sour coffee. If you are tired of drinking sour coffee, you have come to the right place. In this part of the article, we will try to give you everything you need to know about in order to fix your sour coffee. However, we will give these solutions based on your brewing method, so you can easily find the problem and fix it.

How To Fix Sour French Press Coffee

Being one of the best and easiest coffee brewing methods, the French press can give you perfectly brewed coffee if you brew your coffee without these mistakes. Without further ado, let’s talk about what you can do to reduce the sourness of your coffee when you use the French press as a brewing method.

• Brew Longer: If you brew your coffee longer, you will get more extraction which means you reduce the sourness of your coffee. When you brew coffee, make sure you are brewing it for at least 4 minutes. You can brew even more depending on your coffee beans, however, don’t brew it too much otherwise you can get some bitter flavors. If you pay attention to the brewing time, you might remove too sour espresso from your life.
• Try Different Type of Coffee: If your coffees are sour, the type of coffee that you use might be the problem. If you use light roast and coarse grind, your chances of under-extracting are high. Therefore, you may have to change your coffee type if you are willing to drink a good cup of coffee.
• Grind Your Coffees Finer: Using finer grounds may be a little tricky because they can clog the mesh filter. However, to avoid this problem, you can try grind sizes to find out what size is the best for you. Using finer grounds, as we said earlier, helps you to get rid of the sour taste in your coffee.

How to Fix Sour Cold Brew Coffee

• Finer Grind Is the Solution: As you know, cold brew is similar to the French press. What’s more, thanks to the long steeping process, cold brew doesn’t have any under-extraction problems. However, If your cold brew coffee is sour, you might want to grind your beans finer.
• Change Your Coffee to Water Ratio: Not using enough coffee when you prepare your cold brew might be the cause of your sour coffee problem. To solve this problem, you can use 1:5 or 1:4 coffee to water ratio.

How to Fix Sour Drip or Pour-Over Coffee

• Use Finer Coffee Grounds: If you are having problems with your pour-over coffee, you may have to change your grind size. Grinding coffee beans finer, as we said earlier, helps you to get rid of the sour taste in your coffee. The same thing goes for the pour-over coffee too.
• Increase the Brewing Time: If you are wondering how to make coffee less sour when you use pour-over as a brewing method. You can change your brewing time in order to get rid of the sour taste in your coffee. However, increasing the brewing time can be tricky with Chemex. Therefore, you may want to use something like a clever dripper.

Wrapping Up

Now that you have learned how to get rid of sourness, you can try these methods next time you make a coffee. What’s more, if your instant coffee tastes sour or any coffee that you drink tastes sour, you can try these methods and see if they work. Leave a comment if you have some tips and tricks for reducing sourness!