Are you a fan of espresso, cold brew, aeropress? Do you try new beans and roasters regularly, or stay with what you know and love?
I generally prefer filter coffee (with a re-usable filter, no oil sucking paper!) or plunger, but currently have only the plunger because of lack of space. A good syphon can also be supurb. I’ve also started roasting my own beans - I’m definitely a long way from expert, but am getting pretty solid results and am am slowly improving.
It’s one of those “it depends” things. You need to play with the quantity, temperature and time depending on the beans you get. If the beans aren’t freshly roasted, you really notice the difference with plunger coffee – it’ll taste flat or stale. In general, the more bitter flavour components take longer to come out. The longer you leave it in the plunger, the more bitter the coffee will be.
I hardly put any milk in my coffee, so I don’t like stuff that’s under-roasted. It needs to be roasted dark enough that it doesn’t taste acidic. (It isn’t an issue if you’re putting more milk in your coffee, because the milk acts as a pH buffer and you won’t get that acidic taste. A flat white or latte is far more tolerant of a light roast.) But if it’s roasted too dark, like a typical French roast, it just ends up tasting bitter.
Thanks for the detailed response! I’ll play around with those variables and see how I go, I’ve probably been using water that’s too hot and leaving it for too long!