5 most common mistakes when making coffee at home

Black Market Roasters, the online coffee bean shop looks at the most common problems people face when making coffee at home. They are simple to fix, just read on and you will be tasting fantastic tasting coffee in no time!

1. The coffee they receive is dead!

If you buy coffee from a supermarket, chances are the coffee is already lifeless and therefore tastes stale and non-exciting. This is because you should consume coffee within about 3-4 weeks from roast date, depending on your set-up. Ensure you receive your coffee in an airtight package with a one-way valve, grind to order if possible and seal it up as soon as you take out what you need for that day. Think of it as a tub of ice cream…metaphorically speaking, because they are not so similar really….If you leave a tub of ice cream out of the freezer, it begins to melt and within a couple of hours, all the amazing creamy frosty texture of the ice cream is melted and we can’t get it back. Now, this doesn’t mean we put coffee in the freezer!!

2. The grinder they use is either not good enough to cut the beans in an even way, or the grind setting is completely wrong

Without going into minute detail here [See How to change your grind setting], basically if you have uneven coffee grounds packed in together, the water won’t know what to do, freak out and just rush through the coffee and it will taste washy or super bitter.

3. Not cleaning the machine regularly

This doesn’t take hours everyday, all you need to do is use your blank head in your portafilter (handle), put into the group head and run the hot water for about 10-20 seconds after every coffee. This will remove most of the previous coffees leftover grounds and prevent them from entering the next cups and tainting the flavour. Also I would suggest using your chemical powder (proper coffee cleaning powder) once a month (if you have a coffee or two a day) to ensure you dissolve the coffee particles which are up inside the machine

4. They steam the milk before pulling the espresso

This is super simple to resolve. Basically small domestic espresso machine have small boilers and hence have a limited supply of at call pressure. So the most important part of this whole coffee making process is the espresso and we need maximum pressure to do this. So after the machine is warmed up, purge (manual press the water button from the group head) for 3 seconds, to ensure the hot water is in the group head, then place the portafilter with coffee inside, into the group head. Then after this is done and the espressos are made, move onto milk

5. Put the right amount of coffee in the basket

This I see all too often. If it is a 12 gram basket, put 12 grams in. If you don’t have scales, get some just to measure it once. Then you will have an idea of where the coffee tamp should sit after you have put the ground coffee in the group head. This is a very important one as, an amount of coffee above the proper dose weight will lead to a very bitter coffee!

You can jump over to our beans page where we sell freshly roasted single origin coffee beans and coffee blends sourced from all over the world. We are an online coffee roasting company, which receives some of the world’s best beans, perfect for your revile coffee machine, grinder or other coffee maker!

Want to learn the tricks of the trade to become the best at-home barista you can? Check out our courses today!