How To Save Bland Home-Brewed Coffee Without Making A New Pot

Coffee is the elixir of life for many, for whom there's no worse bummer than brewing a flavorless, dull pot. This can happen for a number of reasons: a dirty brewer, an insufficient or over-tamped amount of grounds, or even poor-quality beans. And while there are even brewing methods that are best for instant coffee, they may not be enough to produce the full-bodied, complex taste that caffeine lovers crave. If your coffee is a dud, do you need to dump the whole pot and start anew? Not so fast, says Jee Choe of Oh, How Civilized. "[A]dding a pinch or two of salt can help to add flavor to a bland cup of coffee," she tells Foodie. "I would give that a try before brewing a whole new pot."

Does this sound strange? Think again! We've previously touted salt and cinnamon as a two-ingredient trick to upgrade cheap coffee, and salt can work wonderfully in coffee on its own merits. Okay, not as a replacement for a heaping teaspoon of sugar — that would indeed be weird — but because a little salt amplifies flavor in coffee and helps to neutralize undesirable bitterness. Basically, the sodium in salt tricks taste receptors on our tongues into picking up the delicate, hidden nuances of better coffee flavors.

If you've never heard of putting salt in coffee to make it taste better, you're admittedly a bit late to the party. Unlike brewing coffee with more coffee as a substitute for water, which is a dubious idea, this is a time-tested hack with plenty of culinary tradition behind it. Coffee lovers in Taiwan enjoy sea salt coffee, which consists of a fluffy head of salty milk foam atop an iced americano, and Turkish brides traditionally brew salted coffee for their husbands-to-be and in-laws on their wedding mornings. Salting coffee has even made its way over to TikTok, where dozens of videos extol the magic of this unexpected addition to your morning coffee ritual.

Dark roasts will especially benefit from a generous sprinkle of salt, but any coffee will be enhanced by this condiment. You may even find that the flavors are so much more enjoyable that you don't even want sugar! So go ahead and try salt with your coffee, assuming that your health permits a bit of extra sodium in your diet. A pinch, or about half a gram, is perfect for one cuppa, but you can scale that amount up depending on the size of your brewer if you are doctoring a whole pot.