With the water situation in Vancouver (extra stuff in the water), the coffee’s been tasting a little different lately. I’ve noticed coffees tasting less clean from the Clover - with some tasting downright dirty! I also had a little chat with Alistair about water the other day. This got me thinking about the role of water in coffee.
Water is obviously a major part of coffee, and bad water will indeed make your coffee taste awful. But what about water that is just different? For instance, mineral water. What would coffee taste like prepared with Evian, or some other mineral water (I dislike Evian, by the way)? What components of the water are most important? To my knowledge, Cirqua had attempted to do something to this extent, with their customized water delivery systems. However, I would love to actually do a cupping, or prepare some espresso with different waters. Maybe a high concentration of hydrogen carbonate or extra potassium chloride would make coffees taste different. The SCAA specifies a specific range of tds values for the water that they say will produce a better cup of coffee, but there is no mention of specific compounds. Surely this is yet another variable that deserves some research.
Matthew
2 responses so far ↓
pullingshots // November 30, 2006 at 8:18 am
I would be up for a multiwater tasting. I think I would prefer a tasting though as opposed to a cupping. Get out a whole bunch of french presses and use several waters. I know I’ve made coffee with Vittel water before and it was very nice.
Ben Kaminsky // March 7, 2007 at 1:43 am
I’ve been looking into this a lot lately, shoot me an email if you want to chat. We met at gimme! right?
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