I love my coffee. Who doesn’t want (or need for all you coffee addicts out there) a cup of freshly brewed java to start their day? However, the bitterness of coffee is something most of us could do without.

Now chemists in Germany and the U.S. say they have identified the chemicals that are largely responsible for coffee’s bitterness. Their study, one of the most detailed chemical analyses of coffee bitterness to date, was presented this week at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society [1].