Whats in your Water?

Considering water makes up 98% of your coffee,  the chemistry of the water you brew with will influence the flavor of your cup Immensely.  Coffee professionals use water standards when cupping coffees so results can be compared between different labs.  

While just having a cup at home does not seen like it should require so much effort,  having pure water with the right balance of minerals and PH does make for better tasting/more enjoyable coffee that anyone can taste the difference in.   This is a deep and complicated subject,  if you really want to geek out James Hoffmann one of my favorite coffee youtubers has made a very detailed video on The Best Water for Coffee  

But let's keep things simple here.  The easiest way to get great water for brewing your high quality beans is to use RO or distilled water with a Third Wave Water Packet.  Simply drop the contents of the appropriately sized packet into a 1 gallon or 5 gallon jug of distilled or reverse osmosis water and you have perfectly balanced water for making great tasting coffee.  If you have your own reverse osmosis system then fill your own gallon jug and add the Third Wave Packet and your set.   If not consider getting a water service that delivers reusable (mutch better for the planet) 5 gallon (make sure you ask for distilled or RO water) jugs that go on a water dispenser.   Add a 5 Gallon Third Wave Water Packet before loading on the dispenser and your good to go. 

Why not just use reverse osmosis or distilled water?  Believe it or not this is much worse then just using tap water unless you add back the mineral ions and ph balance needed to brew good coffee.  The water needs the mineral ions to help extract solids from the ground coffee beans and coffee naturally has a good deal of acid.  Good brewing water has some base (sodium bicarb) to neutralize some of this acid in the coffee but not all of it. Too much buffer will make your coffee taste flat.  So with all things there is a balance.  Distilled and RO water is also bad for your coffee equipment.  Since purified water has no mineral ions,  it will try to make up for this (Nature does not like a vacuum) by leaching minerals from any metal parts in your machine.   While there are recipes out there for adding the needed minerals and PH, this more like a science experiment.  If you just want a good cup of coffee,  by far the easiest way to accomplish this is to add the Third Wave Water Packet in some purified water and your done.