How to Dial in Your Coffees at Home According to Taste

Jan 15

BonLife Coffee Roasters how to adjust and dial in coffees according to taste specialty coffee blog post.

We’ve talked about extraction on the blog before. Like we mentioned then, it’s a complex subject, but it’s an essential part to learning how to dial in coffees. Let’s dive in further today on the blog!

If you read our previous blog post you know that a perfectly extracted coffee should taste syrupy sweet. It will be full of lovely tasting notes and balanced acidity; it won’t be sour and thin (under-extracted) or bitter and dry (over-extracted). You can check out that previous post to learn more about how to fix extraction

But what if you want to know more about how to dial in coffees? How do you taste and identify how you want to make changes to alter the taste? How do you adjust your at-home brews to be more like the cup of coffee you want?

Once you understand extraction, you’re equipped to play around with it. What we mean is this: if you are able to identify when a coffee is under or over extracted, you are able to play around with that window in between the two and adjust the taste of the coffee you’re brewing.

Maybe you like to brew coffee at home with a V60 pourover. You know the coffee you’re brewing isn’t over or under extracted; it doesn’t taste thin, watery, sour, or bitter and dry. But you want it to taste brighter; maybe you want to pull more of the citrusy tasting notes out that you know the coffee has. Great! Make the grind size a bit coarser. The next pourover will brew more quickly and taste brighter. As with espresso, the adjustments you’re making for taste need to be really small. Grind size has a direct effect on extraction and taste.

Just because the coffee is tasting brighter doesn’t mean it’s under-extracted and vice versa. Maybe instead of pulling more of the bright fruit notes out you want to pull more chocolately tasting notes out. So you tighten up the grind size; making it finer will make your next pour over brew more slowly. It will taste more chocolatey or caramelized depending on the coffee you’re brewing.

As with so many specialty coffee skills, dialing in coffees according to your taste preferences requires trial and error and lots of practice. You might taste a few cups of over or under extracted coffees before it clicks. All of that tasting will only help to refine your palate! It’s not in vain. The more you practice the better you’ll get at dialing in!

So where do you start? Once you feel comfortable with extraction and understand the differences between over, under, and well-extracted coffees, buy a new bag of coffee with tasting notes that interest you. Play around with different brew times, speeds, and grind sizes. See if the alterations you make help coax out those tasting notes more.