If you're like me, you might strive to make the best coffee possible at home, but you can get overwhelmed (read: lazy) once the scales and manipulations get involved. I reached out to Sarina Prabasi, who founded it Buni baking and a trio of coffee shops in northern Manhattan. The task was to eradicate the simple mistakes that people overlook when making coffee at home.
Buunni specializes in ethically sourced beans from growing regions across Ethiopia, where the coffee is fruity, floral and sometimes fragrant like tea. Prabasi moved with her husband and business partner from Ethiopia, bringing with her the country's ethos of hospitality and high-quality coffee. 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 insight on how to make simple adjustments 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 seriously also seriously,” said Prabasi. “So it must be something pleasant, otherwise why would I do it?”
1. Washing the coffee maker too often with detergent
Even the tiniest layer of soap residue can stain your next glass.
Ditching the soap for your coffee pot and beer with dipping may seem like dubious advice. In reality, your coffee equipment does not need cleaning down every time you use it. Even small layers of smelly dish soap or laundry detergent residue will leave you with a pot of coffee.
“It really stays there; it can interfere with the flavor, so usually a good rinse with super hot water is enough for black coffee,” Prabasi said. Bean oils can build up over time, so an unscented dish soap is helpful for the occasional deep clean. However, a simple rinse with warm water will be more than enough for everyday use. Save time and avoid any unwanted “soap” essence interrupting the notes of your single origin Sidama natural baking.
2. Buying more coffee than you can brew fresh
Coffee beans are one of the pantry staples that you don't need to buy in bulk.
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, flat coffee, especially for the average drinker and households of two or one person. Probasi told us you'll know the coffee is stale because it “can taste like a shadow of itself.”
Baking recommends looking for a roast date on the coffee label within a month or ideally within two weeks. (Keep in mind, the “best by” date varies and, unfortunately, is not an indication of freshness.) If you're someone who doesn't like to grind at home, the bake date should be on the cooler side.
All that said, you don't need to panic about the flavor going down like a ticking time bomb in your cupboard. “Every day after roasting doesn't mean it loses its freshness, but after two weeks I'd say it starts to diminish,” says Prabasi. Keep coffee in an airtight container, but avoid a humid refrigerator with its abundance of odors that can cling to the beans.
3. Adjusting to multiple tasks simultaneously
You can find instructions online that recommend brewers, scales, tampers, water filters, grinders, and various techniques to make the perfect cup. Experimentation is key to making your favorite brew, but only if you start with the basics. “So just adjust the water only at first,” Prabasi said.
If you don't have a kitchen kitchen scalethe roaster told us 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 it seems too weak or too strong, then 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, you might prefer a dark roast,” Prabasi said. Coffee too bitter? You can adjust the roast type by purchasing a level down, such as dark to medium or medium to light. “If you've got a coffee from East Africa, maybe try one from South America, you know, kind of move it around,” she said. Changing one element at a time ensures that you know which step affected the result for better or worse.
4. Taking water directly from the tap
Filtered water makes better coffee.
Filling your pot with tap water will yield 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 by the home water filtration system.
Almost all the tap water you get in the US is disinfected with low levels of chlorine. It is reported by the EPA every fifth person drinks chloraminesa backup disinfectant made from chlorine and ammonia to kill harmful viruses and bacteria like 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. Ignoring the aroma of coffee
The smell can be a dead giveaway 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 smell. Aroma is a key indicator of taste. No aroma means a serious lack of flavor.
Prabasi said stale coffee can taste muddy or flat and lack the complex tasting notes that a bag can list on the label. “That's why I think in the coffee profession, a lot of what we do is coffee tasting,” she said. “From the farm to the cafe, at every step of the way coffee is tasted or filled, in our vernacular.
Old coffee probably won't make you sick, so there's no need to throw it away. However, you may want to switch from drinking coffee black. Making iced coffee is a simple way to mask a lack of tasting notes. Using a ground brew also allows you to steep the grounds longer to add a little more flavor after the coffee has mellowed.
6. Skipping the organic label
Don't sleep on organic coffee even if it costs a few dollars more.
The multitude of coffee brands at the grocery store can feel overwhelming. To help sift through the masses, Prabasi explains that the organic coffee label is a sign of quality that is important to the coffee.
“If you can, then I think for coffee and tea, organic is really important because the coffee and tea crops, especially from the big farms, tend to be oversprayed,” Prabasi said. Pesticides are sprayed directly onto coffee cherries, and coffee is not like an apple you can wash or a banana you peel before eating. The tea leaves go through a similar process where anything left on the leaves will then be steeped in your mug.
The cafe owner made it clear that she does not believe that coffee needs to be expensive to be considered “good”. Great coffee is made for a variety of budgets. “I think the care that goes into and the thought of care that goes into sourcing, baking or just serving, I would look for those things,” Prabasi said. The organic label is a useful place to start.
7. Always take your coffee “to go”
Coffee isn't just fuel for your morning, it's the perfect excuse to engage and relax.
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 inherently a problem. Instead, Prabasi invites coffee drinkers to use whatever time and ability they have 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 the people you care about. “And I want to say — like, I lived in Ethiopia for eight years — I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm going to drink coffee,'” Prabasi said. “It was always, 'Let's have coffee, let's have coffee?'
Even taking an extra 10 minutes to grab a drink at a coffee shop instead of reaching 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 it's enjoyed,” Prabasi said. Taking the time to create your own ritual, whether it's 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 the best travel mugs of 2025, tested by CNET.