Whenever I brew a cup of coffee and leave the pot on the hotplate it always tastes bitter and/or burnt after a while. Why?
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Have you ever noticed that apple slices will turn brown after sitting in the air for a little bit? This is because chemicals in the apple are reacting with oxygen in the air and changing chemically, it’s called “non-enzymatic browning”.
Anywho, there are also compounds in coffee beans that will react with oxygen in a similar way. This is part of why you want your coffee freshly roasted and kept in tightly sealed bags. The reaction at play with coffee creates acidic compounds that taste gross. That’s what’s going on this example.
A burnt flavor normally occurs if the beans are overroasted (which happens before you even buy the grounds–so that’s probably unlikely), or if you overcook the coffee. This can also occur if you brew your coffee with too-hoot water for too long. After you brew, it’s ideal to keep your coffee as warm as possible. Keeping it piping hot is only going to kill the flavor.
I’d you’re using a drip brewing system with a hot plate, and the hot plate stays on, that is burning your coffee.
Because the coffee is burnt.
Before we got our robotic coffee machine, we had a simple carafe brewer with a hotplate. We had the same problem, and sometimes people would leave the carafe on the plate with no coffee in it making the carafes almost impossible to clean.
Our solution was to purchase a few of those pump thermoses, and leave the hotplate off. One would brew the coffee and once brewed pour it in the thermos. If a thermos was empty or almost empty someone would make a new pot.
In addition to the carafes being easy to clean, we had hot unburnt coffee all day,
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