The last few days I noticed an unpleasant salty and metallic background in my coffee. My coffee is always roasted with a couple of weeks, so it wasn’t freshness. The most common reason for a coffee tasting different is aftertastes from other food and drink. But when it happened the next day too, I set about looking for another source of the taint.
We had found traces of silt in the well water. Maybe that was it. We changed the filter and cleaned and flushed, but the problem persisted.
Then dishwasher started acting up. I had changed dishwasher tabs and the rinse cycle was not completing properly. So I sorted that out, but the problem persisted.
We were in the midst of a 5 month dispute about a coffee maker and were swapping various brewing setups as it dragged on. Maybe the dosing needed changing? But no, the problem persisted.
Maybe the grind size had been inadvertently changed. No, the grind size was fine.
Gosh I hope it isn’t the coffee! But our the crop is the same and quality control has not picked up a problem. And it tasted great at my local espresso bar!
Oh wait! Does my grinder need cleaning?
So finally I realized that with all the swapping of brewing equipment, the grinder had not been cleaned in a long time.
Naturally I had a box of our handy dandy Cafetto Grinder Cleaner on hand. In 10 minutes I was brewing a fresh pot and I had my best cup of coffee in a week.