No tomato?? 
While I assume most people just forgot to mention it, tomato is not necessary. (In fact, a Texas red purist chili would not have beans or tomato in it.)
So in addition to the chiles, add chile powder? That sounds like cheating! 
Nah. To me, chili without using chili powder of some sort never tastes right. This can be your own chili powder, but there seems to be a different flavor with powdered chilis va reconstituted chilis that are rehydrated and blended.
I like the way it tastes, using dried chiles, but it seems there’s always a bitter note. It becomes unnoticeable after the first spoonful, but I’d rather it wasn’t there.
The chili at Tito’s Tacos, in Culver City, CA, is meat and red sauce. If you order chili, it gets put into a bowl or cup. If you order a meat burrito, it gets wrapped up in a flour tortilla. No tomatoes. That’s what I’m trying to make.
Are you using the soaking liquid? I find that makes it bitter.
I did use the broth the chiles simmered in.
When I’ve made this before, I did not reconstitute the chiles. That batch also had the bitter taste. (Of course, the ‘soaking liquid’ was the water everything was cooking in.)
I had the same issue, and I found the liquid to be the culprit. I’m not sure all types of dried chiles have that bitterness–I don’t think the anchos has it, but either or both the guajillos and Padilla did. I figured it out by, well, tasting the soaking liquid. It was quite obviously bitter. So check it next time. Also, if you didn’t seed you peppers, that also contributes bitterness (and heat, of course).
That’s a good idea. I can simmer an ancho and a guajillo separately, and taste the liquid.
I removed most of the seeds, but there were some. I’ve never found the seeds bitter in jalapeños, Serranos, or Thai chiles.
Looking online, it seems that many others have had the same issue with soaking chiles and say to taste the soaking liquid before deciding to add it or not.
Kind of off subject and no snark meant, but why do you add fat to ground beef to brown it? I’ve been reading a lot of instant pot recipes lately and almost all of them have you brown the meat in some sort of fat. I was always taught that there was plenty of fat in ground beef in the first place. Does everyone else brown ground meat in fat?
And thanks for leaving the beans out of the chili.
people add fat to the meat because they buy meat that’s too lean to cook its self … I’m told anything that’s under 70/30 needs fat to cook
For me, the fat doesn’t render out fast enough if I’m browning, so it does tend to stick to the bottom of the pan a bit. I don’t add a lot of fat–just enough to thinly coat the bottom of the pan. I typically use 70-30 to 80-20 meat.
I didn’t use ground beef. I used chuck roast.
I don’t add fat when I do cook ground beef.
I use 96/4 or 93/7 ground beef usually. I’ve just never thought it needed any oil.
Oh, nice. Sounds like you were making real chili. 
I don’t know what the Californian chili you’re trying to replicate tastes like, but you might be interested in the Serious Eats recipe for a bowl of Texas red, which is also tomato-less and made with chunks of chuck. It’s very similar in approach to what you made. This recipe soaks the chiles in broth, though, and doesn’t get rid of any liquid, so you might want to soak them separately to be safe. The other thing I forgot to mention that causes bitterness is if you scorch the chiles while pan roasting them.
ETA: Reading the comments, it does seem a few people have noticed a bitterness from the chiles, and many have not. So I wonder if it is just the batch of chiles you happen to use. Kenji (the recipe writer) speculated it’s from, as I mentioned above, over toasting the chiles, but other readers disagree. I do know that if I just go the chile powder route and not the toasted chile route, I’ve never had an issue with bitterness.
I like to add some cocoa to my chili.
I also add a tiny pinch of cinnamon. Not enough to notice as sweet or cinnamony, just enough to add something special.