There is a celebrated coffee place in your city. Their coffee is premium and so unique, you hear. You finally decide to give their coffee a try and order a cup that appeals to you. Once it arrives, you take a sip and the sourness hits you like a truck. Before you regret your decision, let’s discuss why that happened.
Why is hipster coffee sour? Hipster coffee is sour due to the choice of beans and the roasting process. Third wave coffee shops roast their coffee beans lightly to get a premium coffee flavor. Hipster coffee is not made from dark roast coffee beans. Both makers and fans of hipster coffee also associate sourness with a premium taste which has nurtured this specialty trend.
Why Is Hipster Coffee Sour
Before going into the details, let’s take a look at what hipster coffee is, just for the sake of clarity.
What is Hipster Coffee?
Anything that isn’t mainstream or regular can be considered hipster coffee.
If there is a local coffee shop that serves their unique (or bizarre) style of coffee that is quite different from what you get from Starbucks and other places, then you can call them a hipster coffee shop.
Hipster coffee you get from these specialty shops has a bright flavor with distinct notes. If you’re taking the first sip, there is a good chance you might find it sour because of the way it is prepared.
Now, not all hipster coffees are sour. Many specialty coffees taste great without a touch of sourness.
Sometimes, regular coffee can also be sour. But that’s mostly due to under-extraction and bad coffee preparation. That’s just a bad coffee, and no one likes one.
You can compare the sourness of a hipster coffee to that of a regular coffee. The former is meant to taste that way, but the latter is undesirable and often not good on your taste buds.
When it comes to coffee, we’ve had three waves of coffee. Each wave has given coffee lovers something unique and has evolved into the next level.
- First Wave: 1960 and above. Coffee becomes a common beverage.
- Second Wave: 1980 and above. Rise of mainstream coffee places like Starbucks and others.
- Third Wave: 2000 and above. Specialty coffee shops with unique coffee
Yes, you guessed right. Hipster coffee shops belong to the third wave coffee phenomenon. Third wave coffee is so big that you can’t go to an airport without seeing one.
Although Third wave coffee is huge, the debate over the sourness of the coffee is still prevalent.
Traditional coffee lovers are not fans of this coffee. While the number of people who love this coffee keeps on increasing every day, we still have to answer the question.
Why is Hipster coffee sour? Why Make It That Way?
The Roast
We have already mentioned that hipster coffee houses like to light-roast their coffee beans.
A lightly roasted and ground coffee bean will have more complex flavors as it will preserve a good portion of the acids found in coffee beans.
Coffee beans come with Chlorogenic acid (an interesting paper), quinic acid, citric acid, acetic acid, malic acid, lactic acid, phosphoric acid, and many more. Light roasting coffee beans will retain a generous amount of these acids in your beans which delivers a complex taste profile.
Anything below medium roasting can be considered a light roast. Roasting coffee beans light is the main reason why your coffee has a sour note to it.
Each coffee house uses its methods to find the right amount of light roast for their coffee beans. For some, light can be just under medium but for others, it can be well below medium roast.
Many specialty roasters would even dismiss anything that is roasted medium and beyond.
We can conclude that lightly roasted coffee beans are one main reason why you get sourness in your cup of joe.
The Premium Tag
Any coffee with a premium tag will have a touch of sourness.
This is because the sourness is desired and often expected from a high-end coffee.
A majority of premium coffee houses will give you sour hipster coffee. There are a lot of elements in the coffee that contribute to this sour taste and rich aroma.
If you’ve had green coffee, you would know that the acidity levels are off the charts and you can get a tangy taste. People who like drinking green coffee like it for this very taste profile which in turn tailwinds the making of such coffees.
The Maker’s Pride
Any specialty coffee house will have immense pride over the coffee they serve.
When sourness is associated with premium coffee, these coffee makers want their coffee to taste the same. Along with sourness, you get other complex flavors in your coffee, but people usually love or hate their coffee because of the sourness.
Some places go so far as to even serve under-extracted coffee. This usually won’t work well, as under-extracted coffee isn’t premium by any means.
Very few specialty coffee houses, the smart ones, know that a premium coffee doesn’t have to be sour. They choose to impart the sourness in their coffee as a choice and not as a result of dogma.
The Demand
The support hipster coffee gets from its consumers is massive.
For every coffee lover who hates the idea of sour coffee, there is one who can’t complete their day without tasting their local artisan coffee with a note of sourness in it.
This demand from consumers has kept the trend of sour coffees growing. To be honest, the trend is going strong and isn’t losing steam any time soon.
The Miscellaneous
In addition to these factors, there are a lot of tiny factors that contribute to the sour taste of your local coffee.
Some of the random factors can be a not-so-clean coffee machine, under-extraction of coffee, wrong water temperature, bad coffee to water ratios, and other ones as well.
Sourness Factor: Hipster Coffee vs Regular Coffee
The comparison between hipster coffee and regular coffee will give you an idea of how sour hipster coffee can be.
Regular coffee is not sour, when done right.
Regular coffee will be sour if you’re using light-roasted beans or under-extracting your coffee.
While light-roasted beans are a preference, under-extracting your coffee is a mistake which is something you’d not want to repeat again.
Now, let’s talk about hipster coffee.
Dropping a sour flavor in hipster coffee is done on purpose. The acidity levels on your coffee are quite high as the coffee beans are roasted lightly (to various degrees depending on the roaster).
When you compare a regular brewed coffee and a hipster coffee side by side, you will find the latter to be overwhelmingly sour. You might even wonder what’s all the fuss about this disgusting beverage.
But just like black coffee, most hipster coffees, and their sour notes are acquired tastes. You need the desire the sour taste to enjoy them.
There is nothing wrong with preferring one coffee over the other. But let’s agree that there is no right coffee.
People Love Hipster Coffee
Why is acidic coffee so popular?
Hipster coffee is not a fad.
If you’re someone who is looking to try a new variety of coffee, then trying a local artisan coffee isn’t a bad idea.
Local coffee shops that specialize in hipster coffee handle every step of their coffee-making cycle. Right from roasting the beans to the brewing method, they micro-manage every single aspect.
One of the main reasons why people love hipster coffee so much is that each coffee is different and comes with a unique taste profile.
One specialty coffee house might serve you sour premium coffee while another coffee shop might use the same beans to deliver a completely different coffee beverage, without any sourness!
For some reason, people have associated sourness with premium. This reason has also encouraged coffee makers to make their coffee sourer thereby snowballing this trend into something huge.
You do have to agree that a period of consuming sour, specialty coffee will make your darker roast taste quite bad. When you’re a fan, you might find dark roasted coffee to have a charcoal-like smoothness.
How to Avoid Making Sour Hipster Coffee?
So you’re not a fan of the sour hipster coffee and want to bring the sourness down a notch?
Here are some tips to dial down the sourness in your coffee.
Avoid Light Roasts
If you do this right, you can avoid a sour coffee 99 out of 100 times.
Do not go for lightly roasted coffee beans. Go with a medium roast or a dark roast. They are roasted for a longer period and are much darker in color.
Both these roasts will remove most of the acid content in the coffee beans so they will give your sour coffee when extracted perfectly.
Medium roast coffee beans are great for pour-over coffee, drip coffee, and other brewing techniques. Darker roasts are excellent for cold brew, French press, Espresso, and other methods.
Extract Your Coffee Right
Preventing under-extraction is the best way to avoid sourness in your coffee.
Brew your coffee beans (medium or dark roast) for the right time. Do not complete the brewing process before it ends. This can give you the sour taste you despise.
It is also important not to extend for brewing process for more than it is necessary. This could lead to over-extraction, and it will turn your coffee bitter.
The extraction time will be different for each coffee brewing method so pay attention and extract your coffee right.
Master the Coffee To Water Ratio
The coffee to water ratio has to be perfect for your brewing technique of choice.
If you have more water when extracting coffee, there is a good chance that your coffee has turned sour.
If by mistake you’ve added more water, you can compensate for that by adding more coffee into the mix. The final extract will be much better in taste and definitely not sour.
Any coffee lover would agree that weak coffee is worse than sour coffee. So do master the coffee to water ratio.
Nail The Water Temperature
Water temperature plays a role in the coffee extraction process.
If your water is not hot enough, then your coffee will be under-extracted giving it a sour taste.
Water temperature has to be in the range of 195 to 205 degrees for the perfect extraction. If you feel like your water is not hot enough, heat it further and make sure you extract the most out of your coffee grounds.
Use Additives For Better Taste
Well, things didn’t seem to work well for you and you’ve ended up with a sour cup of coffee.
What to do now?
You can add additives like steamed milk or cream to your coffee to balance the sourness in it. But beware that adding milk to highly acidic coffee can curdle it immediately. Also, avoid the same with hot coffee.
Related Read: Why Does Cream Curdle In Coffee?
You will also find adding sugar helps in reducing the sour notes in your coffee drink. Some love the addition of chocolate to enhance the coffee taste.
We hoped you found this blog post useful. Hipster coffee is a thing of an acquired taste. More often, it will taste sour than not.
If you’re not a fan of this sour coffee, you can always stick to your regular coffee or, even worse, instant coffee.
Do let us know if you have any questions.
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