Always smell your coffee: An expert explains the biggest brewing mistakes

If you want to do the best possible cup of coffee every morning there are some things to keep in mind. It doesn’t matter what brand of coffee you use or how you prepare it. In fact, there are various aspects of your morning drink to consider before serving it hot for the day. And that includes, believe it or not, doing things like sniffing it.

I recently spoke with Sarina Prabasi, who founded Buunni Bakery and a trio of cafes in northern Manhattan. The task was to eradicate simple mistakes that people overlook when making coffee at home.

Buunni specializes in ethically sourced beans from growing regions in Ethiopia where the coffee is fruity, floral and sometimes aromatic like tea. Prabasi moved with her husband and business partner from Ethiopia, bringing the country’s spirit of hospitality and high-quality coffee with her. The team also creates custom Buunni blends with select beans from around the world.

As a micro-roaster who serves on the board of the Specialty Coffee Association, Prabasi offered some insight on how to make simple tweaks for a better cup of coffee. She’s also not one to sweat the small stuff. “You know, we take coffee seriously, but we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” Prabasi said. “So it has to be something nice, otherwise why would you do it?”

1. Washing your coffee machine too often with detergent

Ditch the soap for your coffee pot and submersible brewery may seem like dubious advice. In reality, your coffee equipment does not need scrubbing every time you use it. Even small layers of scented dish soap or laundry detergent residue will leave you with a soapy and non-standard pot of coffee.

“It really stays there; it can mess with the taste and so a simple good rinse with super hot water is enough for black coffee,” said Prabasi. Bean oils can build up over time, so an unscented dish soap is helpful for the occasional deep clean. However, a simple rinse with hot water will be more than enough for everyday use. Save yourself time and avoid any unwanted “soap scum” essence interrupting the notes of your single origin Sidama naturally roasted.

2. Buying more coffee than you can brew fresh

Buying in bulk can save time and money at the grocery store, but it can have disappointing results for coffee drinkers. Buying smaller quantities of beans will help avoid drinking stale coffee, especially for the average drinker and households with two or one person. Probasi told us you’ll know a coffee is stale because it “can taste like a shadow of itself.”

Baker recommends looking for a roast date on the coffee label within a month or ideally within two weeks. (Note that the “best by” date varies and is not an indicator of freshness.) If you don’t like to grind at home, the roast date should be on the fresher side.

All that said, you don’t need to panic about the taste deteriorating like a ticking time bomb in your cupboard. “Every day after roasting doesn’t mean it loses freshness, but after two weeks I’d say it starts to diminish,” Prabasi said. Store coffee in an airtight container, but avoid a humid refrigerator with its abundance of odors that can cling to the beans.

3. Correcting more than one thing at once

You can find tutorials online that recommend brewers, scales, sealers, water filters, grinders, and various techniques for making the perfect cup. Experimentation is key to making your favorite drink, but only if you start with the basics. “So, just adjust only the water in the beginning,” Prabasi said.

If you don’t have kitchen scalethe baker told us that the rule of thumb is to start with two tablespoons of ground coffee per cup of water. The finer the grind, the stronger the flavor of your coffee, so you’ll need to adjust the grounds-to-water ratio accordingly. If this seems too weak or too strong, adjust by adding more or less coffee at the same grind level.

Beyond the basics, you can get creative. “If your coffee is too acidic, maybe you prefer a dark roast,” Prabasi said. Coffee too bitter? You can adjust the type of roast by buying a level down, such as dark to medium or medium to light. “If you have an East African coffee, maybe try one from South America, you know, like to switch it up,” she said. Changing one element at a time ensures that you know which step affected the outcome for better or worse.

4. Water straight from the tap

Filling your coffee pot with tap water will result in less than ideal flavors. Filtered water for most of us will make a big difference in the final taste of your coffee. Tap water is often full of byproducts that can easily be filtered out at home water filtration system.

Almost all of the tap water you get in the US is disinfected with low levels of chlorine. This is reported by the EPA every fifth person drinks chloraminesa backup disinfectant made of chlorine and ammonia to kill harmful viruses and bacteria such as salmonella. These chemicals make sure we don’t get sick, but they will change the taste and smell of tap water. Chloramines are also known to strip lead and copper from pipes, byproducts that can affect even the most carefully prepared coffee.

5. Forgetting to stop and smell the coffee

The smell can be a dead sign that your coffee is stale. Prabasi explains that you should immediately open a bag of beans or ground coffee and be able to smell that roasted coffee aroma. Aroma is a key indicator of taste. A lack of aroma means a serious lack of taste.

Prabasi said that stale coffee can taste muddy or flat and lack any of the complex flavor notes that a bag can list on its label. “That’s why I think in the coffee profession, a lot of what we do is taste coffee,” she said. “From the farm to the cafe, every step of the way coffee is tried or bought, in our vernacular.”

Old coffee is unlikely to make you sick, so there’s no need to throw it away. However, you may want to give up black coffee. Brewing cold coffee is an easy way to mask the lack of flavor notes. Using an immersion brewer also allows you to steep the grounds longer to add a little more flavor after the coffee has dulled.

6. Ignoring the organic label

The multitude of coffee brands at the grocery store can seem overwhelming. To help sift through the masses, Prabasi explains that the organic coffee label is a mark of quality that is important to the coffee.

“If you can, then I think for coffee and tea, organic is really important because coffee and tea crops, especially from the big farms, tend to get really over-sprayed,” Prabasi said. Pesticides are sprayed right on the coffee cherries, and coffee is different from an apple you can wash or a banana you peel before eating. Tea leaves go through a similar process where everything else on the leaves will be steeped in your cup.

The cafe owner made it clear that she does not believe that coffee has to be expensive to be considered “good”. Excellent coffee is made for a variety of budgets. “I think the care that goes into, and some thought into the care that goes into sourcing it, baking it or just serving it, I would look for those things,” Prabasi said. The organic label is a useful place to start.

7. Always get your coffee to go

Even if you don’t think of coffee as a pure means to an end, many of us treat coffee simply as fuel. Taking coffee in a travel mug drinking as part of the trip is not an inherent problem. Instead, Prabasi invites coffee lovers to take advantage of any time and opportunity to enjoy a cup of coffee. Unlike the grab-and-go culture in the US, drinking coffee in Ethiopia is an opportunity to slow down and connect with people you care about. “And I like to say — for example, I lived in Ethiopia for eight years — I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘I’m going to get a coffee,'” Prabasi said. “It was always, ‘Let’s have coffee.’ Shall we have coffee?”

Even taking an extra 10 minutes to have your drink at a coffee shop instead of asking for a to-go cup can change the energy of a frenetic morning. “I think there’s a lot of ritual around coffee and how one enjoys it,” Prabasi said. Taking the time to create your own ritual, whether at home or at a local shop, can help you enjoy all that coffee has to offer beyond its caffeine content.

For more information on coffee, here how to read coffee labels and on the best travel mugs of 2025 tested by CNET.