Two good reasons to use filtered water to make coffee, according to one expert

There’s no shortage of adjustments you can make, even without extensive barista training, to push your coffee toward professional quality. As it happens at the start of the day for most of us, and probably multiple times a day (depending on your caffeine addiction), why wouldn’t you want your coffee to be just right? It’s about setting the tone, as well as the essential and mandatory caffeine intake.

If you’re doing everything else you can do: buy Fresh and locally sourced roasted beans, Grind accordingly, Consider your fermentation ratios And use The best way to brewAnd your coffee still doesn’t pass the activation test, what more can you do?

Well, you may have to go back to the other key resource in your coffee game: water. I spoke with Jose Lippi, Director of Sourcing and Quality Control at… Basra coffeeabout how what goes into the tank or boiler affects the outcome of your coffee as much, if not more, than what goes into the grinder.

How does water affect the flavor of coffee?

Whatever you are An odor or taste in your tap water It does not boil during coffee brewing, and the dark roast is not necessarily strong enough to compensate for the tasteless water. “There are different things in the municipal water supply that have some odor,” Libby says. “So you basically have to filter the water to get rid of the bad flavors and odors.” A metallic or moldy flavour, or a bit of chlorine or other chemical flavours, even if slight, can be a sign that it’s time to try filtered water for your coffee.

Not everyone has to do this, if your tap water tastes neutral or clean. “A lot of the best coffee cities in the U.S. — Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, New York — all of these places have great water, so if you make coffee in it, it will taste very good,” Libby says.

If you live somewhere with good tap water and you’re still not satisfied with your coffee, you may have to go back to the drawing board on beans/grind/processing/ratio/temperature. But if this resonates with you so far and you live in a place with less than ideal tap water, read on.

Equipment considerations with water

Another consideration that doesn’t necessarily affect flavor is how water can actually affect your coffee making equipment.

For those who pour over, “When you use a kettle to constantly boil water, you will notice some limescale building up at the bottom,” explains Libby. “The white stuff is usually calcium or other mineral deposits.”

Descaling tablets They can easily be used to repair your kettle, but you may also want to try using them in an automatic drip machine or espresso machine.

Depending on the water quality where you live, mineral buildup can be so severe that it causes your equipment to stop working completely. A serious consideration, especially if you’ve invested in top-notch equipment. “If the reverse osmosis system at our café in Los Angeles goes down for any reason, and we run the water stream for more than a day or two, there is a noticeable amount of limescale that builds up in our equipment,” says Libby. “Our baristas notice that right away.” Small water channels in equipment, such as those found in steam wands, can stop working completely if buildup becomes excessive. (Live testimony here from a kitchen in London.)

Don’t fall into this water trap

If your reaction to all of this is to over-correct and use only distilled water, in fact, don’t do it. “Filtering is better than nothing, but don’t use distilled water because your coffee will actually taste worse,” says Libby.

The balance here is that you don’t want “pure” water that is completely devoid of minerals. “The hardness of the water is part of what will make your coffee taste right, so you need some of those minerals in the coffee to help extract the actual flavors,” he says.

Fix your water if it’s not right for you

So, how do you find the middle ground between water that has been stripped of its minerals and water that does not neutralize the coffee?

You can of course purchase water for making coffee, although this is not ideal. “I’m not advocating that people use bottled water, but there are certain brands that taste better than others, based on their mineral content,” Libby says. “You don’t want too strong a mineral content, because it flattens the flavour; you want something in the middle,” he says, with Crystal Geyser being a favorite brand among coffee professionals. Before you invest in other water solutions, it’s worth testing your taste buds with a barista-recommended bottled water brand to see if you can notice a difference.

If you want to go full barista mode, some pros actually build a water profile from the ground up with Reverse osmosis filter Or distilled water, then add the minerals again. “There’s one book that I think changed the way everyone thinks about water,” says Libby, who is called… Water for coffee. “Now there are entire communities online that make custom water recipes that basically mimic certain cities, so, if you buy a coffee roasted in Tokyo and want to brew the coffee to match it, you can see what the water is like there, and they will give you recommendations on how to recreate it,” he says.

This may seem extreme, but “basically, people just add Epsom salts and baking soda to the water.” Brands like Third wave water and Lotus They also offer quick and easy metal containers to add to distilled or reverse osmosis filtered water.

If you are not Which Committed, but still looking for a makeover, a Brita water pitcher or a simple filter built into your faucet system “is a better starting point,” says Lipa.