Why does nobody talk about how much the water matters more than the beans?
I have been brewing coffee at home for about 4 years and I always blamed my beans when a cup tasted flat or kind of chalky. Last month I was at my sister's place in Denver and she made me a cup with the same beans I use, same ratio, same grinder, and it tasted ten times better. I could not figure it out until she told me she had just installed a cheap filter on her tap. I went home and pulled out my old Brita that had been sitting in the back of my fridge for who knows how long and started using it for my kettle. The very next morning the same beans I was about to throw out tasted sweet and clean. I felt so dumb because I had been spending $18 a bag on fancy single origin stuff while my tap water was basically ruining all of it. Now I want to know, how many of you actually filter your water or check your water quality before you start blaming the roast?
That Brita probably hadn't been changed in months and it still fixed your cup, which tells you the filter in Denver was doing more than just improving taste. What I wonder is whether you ever got your tap water tested, because hard water and chlorine can both wreck coffee but they need different fixes. It would be a shame to buy a whole new setup when a $20 test kit could tell you exactly what you're dealing with.