S2: Episode 1: The Surprising Impact Of This Overlooked Brewing Variable
Welcome to Season 2! This season we will be exploring various - potentially surprising - things that affect the flavour of your coffee. In this first episode of the new season we return to the topic of water. In Season 1, Episode 1, we covered the influence of the temperature of your brewing water on coffee extraction. This time its all about the quality of the water that you brew with as the minerals, metals and salts in water not only affect its taste but also influence the extraction of the coffee too. This week’s FACQ tackles the best water for brewing coffee at home.
Check out Season 1, Episode 1 on brewing water temperature here:
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Email: thecoffeedrinkersguide@gmail.com
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Some numbers to use as a guide when buying bottled water to brew coffee with:
Magnesium levels of 3.5 - 8mg/l
Calcium levels of 12mg/l
Bicarbonate levels below 75mg/l. (Bicarbonate levels above this will flatten and mute fruit flavours, but increase the mouthfeel which is often seen as positive.)
pH: water that is slightly acidic, in the range of pH6 to pH7 produces coffees which have a bright, pleasing flavour.
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Home water filter systems tend to focus on removing limescale and chlorine from the water but don't necessarily balance out the minerals in it, so may still produce poor tasting coffee. It may be worth trying out filter systems that add magnesium to the water as this can improve the coffee’s sweetness and balance.
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Hello and welcome back to Season 2 of The Coffee Drinker’s Guide, a podcast for the coffee curious where I explore and explain the world of specialty coffee to make your daily coffee better and more satisfying.
I’m Angela Holder a coffee roaster and writer on a mission to fight back against bad coffee by giving you the knowledge you need to help you get good coffee and a happier (coffee) life in coffee-break sized episodes. So grab your coffee, pull up a chair and take a break…
In this season we will be exploring various things that affect the flavour of your brew, in some potentially unsuspected and surprising ways. First up - we are returning to the topic of brewing water - and yes there is more to say! In the very first episode of the podcast we focused on the effect of brewing water temperature on the flavour of your coffee and now we are going back to explore the impact of the quality of your brewing water on it too…
…and later I’ll be answering a question about what water you should use to get the best results from your beans so stay tuned to find out…
Water is water, right? Boring, doesn’t taste of much but necessary for life. Necessary for brewing coffee too of course. In fact, when you pause to consider that most of the liquid in your coffee cup is actually water, albeit coffee flavoured water, it suddenly makes the quality of that water seem much more important. Not to scare you, but water is not simply just plain old H2O - it is actually a cocktail of purifying chemicals, minerals, metals, small particles and other residues depending on where it came from. These additional ‘ingredients’, shall we say, affect both the flavour of the water itself and also the extraction of the coffee during brewing. Which gives you pause for thought. Like many people, I had a lot of time on my hands and a freewheeling mind during lockdown. So when I found myself musing on the reason why I kept seeing recommendations to brew coffee with bottled water that had been sourced from volcanic rock aquifers I had to check out why. Shortly afterwards I found myself standing in front of a line of coffee cups brewed using different types of water, tasting spoon in hand. Had I finally gone lockdown crazy? Perhaps.
So firstly water quality and the brew
You may not realise it but every time you brew coffee you are actually engaging in a chemistry experiment using water to dissolve, or extract, coffee flavour compounds from the coffee grinds. The various components found in water that I mentioned earlier get involved in this chemical process to influence the extraction of the coffee for better and worse. So it's worth getting to know the quality of the water that you are brewing with to understand how it may be affecting your drink. If you find that you are not getting a satisfactory flavour from your coffee regardless of what beans you buy or how you brew it, consider changing or improving the water you are brewing with. Another important consideration is that using hard water will lead to the build up of limescale in brewing equipment such as espresso machines, which can cause them to malfunction and which will ultimately damage them if you don’t descale them regularly. Ouch, expensive!
Next water quality and the taste
Of course water needs to be safe to drink but chemicals such as chlorine that are added to water to make it safe can also negatively affect the flavour of coffee brewed with it. Beyond that, minerals and salts found in water affect both the extraction and the perception of fruit flavours, sweetness and mouthfeel. Using distilled or demineralised water makes terrible tasting coffee as you do actually need some minerals to get a good extraction of coffee flavour compounds. In particular, magnesium and calcium are important minerals for achieving a well balanced brew, as magnesium is beneficial for the extraction of fruit flavours and calcium contributes to the mouthfeel or weight of a coffee on the tongue. But while a certain level of these two minerals will have a positive impact on your coffee’s flavour, too much of either will lead to an unbalanced brew.
Finally water quality and the bean
Bean flavours can vary widely from bright, sharp and fruity to deep and rich with little fruitiness. It seems like a no-brainer then that to truly appreciate the range of coffee flavours available it makes sense to use the best water that will allow the full expression of your coffee’s complexity and also balance its fruitiness. As a rule this is water that contains the minerals magnesium and calcium and has low levels of bicarbonates. In my brewing experiments with bottled water I found that those from volcanic rather than limestone aquifers, which are underground layers of water-bearing rock, did indeed produce the best tasting coffee. Interestingly this knowledge could also be used to manipulate a coffee’s flavour. Say you are not keen on fruity coffee but are stuck with a bag of it? Try brewing it with water that has a high level of bicarbonates and bingo! great mouthfeel, reduced fruit. There are sustainability issues with using bottled water, but the variety of different waters on the market is useful to explore the influence of water composition on your brew, as I found in my lockdown tasting experiment. Does this mean that one day you could end up with a store of different waters to brew your coffee with, depending on your mood? Yes it could, but for the record, I do not have a cupboard full of different mineral waters to brew coffee with - I’m not that crazy - yet!
And now its time for a Frequently Asked Coffee Question…
This episode’s question is… What is the best water to brew coffee with at home?
You may be surprised to learn that it could be the water that comes out of your tap. If it is soft water and tastes fresh and free from chemicals, the chances are that it will make a good tasting cup of coffee. However, if your tap water doesn't taste great or is very hard it may be worth buying bottled water to brew coffee with. Pay attention to the mineral composition on the label, avoid highly mineralised water and look for one with a bicarbonate level of 75 milligrammes per litre or less. I’ll put some guidance in the show notes with more detail about what to look for on labels. If you want to do a deep dive into brewing water and achieve your Ultimate Coffee Geek badge you can now buy specialist mineral formulas to add to distilled water in order to create the perfect brewing water for coffee, according to their claims. And no I am not making this up! But full disclosure - I haven't actually tried these formulas out so can't comment on their performance.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coffee Drinker’s Guide and that was all about water quality. I do hope that you found this useful. Did it inspire you to try using a different water to brew with and did it improve your coffee? I’d love to know. You can now send me a direct text message using the ‘send me a message’ link in the show notes. In the next episode we’re taking a look at another unseen factor that can also drastically affect the flavour of your coffee. Make sure you hit follow to find out the influence that the brewing equipment itself has on your coffee. If you know someone who you think would find this episode interesting please make sure you tell them about the show and rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts to help other coffee curious people find the show too. If you have a question about coffee or a topic that you would like me to cover please get in touch. I’m on Instagram @thecoffeedrinkersguide or email me at thecoffeedrinkersguide@gmail.com. Thanks to my executive producer Viel Richardson at Lusona Publishing and Media Limited. You can find him at lusonapub.co.uk. Until next time I’m Angela Holder thanks for sharing your coffee break with me - the best way to tackle life is one coffee at a time and here’s to better coffee!
The Coffee Drinker’s Guide is a Blue Sky Coffee Project.
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