Canada

Using fewer coffee grounds will also extract more of the bitter oils, as once all the other flavor compounds are extracted, there is nothing left but the oils. The little, old ladies (honest, they were mostly tiny women, with some exceptions, of course) in the church circles used to put small amounts of grounds into the big old percolators at the church where I grew up. They always used to complain how strong and bitter the coffee was, but the reason was that they used so little coffee and extracted all the bitter oils into the brew.

Perfect coffee is a delicate dance of water, beans, roasting, ratio of beans to water, grind, time, and temperature. Personally, the most important is the water. If it doesn't taste good cold, it isn't going to taste good hot. Temperature should be 195-205 F. The size of the the grind, amount of beans to water and extraction time are balances that must be played to one's own personal taste. ne wants to extract just what they want and nothing more, as the last things out of the beans is bitter oils and alkaloids.