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What is the right water for making coffee?
What water are you preparing it with?

I've been facing a lot of coffee superstitions lately, or some kind of beliefs, and the topics related to water for making coffee are the ones that generate the most questions.

Questions and doubts about water that are winning:

The battle of the "correct" coffee recipes for different methods (Coffee recipes aren't set in stone; it's good to experiment, not just repeat after someone else. They have a different coffee, different water, a different grinder – why repeat? Hoping it will work anyway?))
the idea that roasting for espresso should be darker ((only if you want it that way or for some reason you got used to it, but it is definitely not mandatory),
and the question "Why does coffee taste salty?" (because it is under-extracted).

And yet, among all of these, the water issue continues to create a lot of confusion.

To name a few: some people defend their position that the softer the water, the fewer minerals it has, the better it is for making coffee (question: “Why not use distilled water?” It has none at all, so I guess the coffee will taste better?).

Some people opt for alkaline water, believing that a higher pH contributes positively to the flavor of coffee prepared with that water.

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood and Christopher H. Hendon have already addressed the topic of water in coffee in their book, Water for Coffee: a must-read for those interested in the subject, focusing on how water works and what elements contribute to coffee flavor and how. Consult this book if you want to understand why low-mineralization water isn't the best choice for making coffee, and why coffee water shouldn't have a pH of around 9 or 5.

The truth is that coffee lovers around the world continue to search for the best water for making coffee.

So… What is the right water for making coffee?

I'll answer this question from the perspective of a roaster and coffee drinker, leaving aside the "coffee geek" (being a coffee geek is useless...).

The right water for brewing a particular coffee from a particular roaster is the water that roaster uses to taste their coffee when looking for the roast profile. Period.

You may ask me why.

Why can't I use water "X" because I consider it to be the best water for making coffee?

Or “Y” water which is very soft?

Or “Z” water that…

The truth is that you can.

And if you've learned enough about water and what contributes to coffee extraction, you can even make your own water with ingredients you can easily buy at the pharmacy. It's all fine, really, as long as you don't claim that only this particular water is suitable.

But there is one important detail, no matter what water you choose to use.

There is already water involved. Before you even brew the coffee you get, that coffee has already been tested. With a particular water. The roaster was cupping it with a certain water, and was guided by the results of that cupping, looking for a specific roast profile. He, intentionally or subconsciously, tuned the coffee to the particular water.

And that will be the best water to drink that coffee, whether you want it or not.

Roasted coffee is always roasted to a specific water temperature, and it would make life much easier, and coffee drinkers more satisfied, if that idea had been communicated more widely. Every bag of coffee you've ever bought was roasted to the water temperature the roaster uses at the location where they cup the coffees. Whether the coffee is from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the United States, or Germany, each of them is water-roasted in their cupping rooms.

It's probably happened to you before. You bought a coffee from a beloved roaster, opened the bag, brewed it at home... And you weren't impressed, or rather, disappointed?

Most likely it's because the water you used and the water the coffee was roasted in were dramatically different.

The message I want to convey with this post is simple. Buying locally roasted coffee, aside from the benefit of fresh roasting, has an additional benefit, hidden from public view, but ultimately even more important. Local roasters probably roast for local water. They roast for the water you have at home.

What does this mean in practice? You can literally make your coffee with tap water and get wonderful results.

So… What water are you making your coffee with?

We all know that once you try Specialty Coffee, properly made, it's impossible to go back to drinking commercial coffee the same way you did before.

You enter a new world of different varieties and origins, and this world is vast and still unexplored. You start trying, searching for new things, making lists of coffee shops to visit and roasters to buy coffee from.

Specialty Coffee. Why do we choose it? Complex, delicate, interesting flavor—after all, thousands of combinations—origins, varieties, processes, different farms, different roasts. It's heaven for those who like to discover something new, in terms of flavors. To educate the palate. To gain new experiences.

But. There's a big BUT in this whole story. And I've mentioned it before. To represent everything it has, Specialty Coffee must be properly prepared.

While a commercial coffee is roasted almost to that coal stateWhen you can't tell the origin, and even if it's Arabica or Robusta, it doesn't matter how it's prepared later. It will have a foreboding flavor, and you'll get that flavor even if you do it wrong. The expected flavor, of course, is not the flavor of coffee, as many people still think, but the flavor of the roast itself, the flavor of the roasting.

Commercial coffee is roasted in such a way that it's irrelevant how it's prepared. Or rather, it's roasted to be prepared without any particular rules. You can try it once—try following the rules for preparing coffee with a commercial blend. Controlling everything, the water, the tamping, the dose… you'll be unable to make a decent cup. Commercial coffee is designed so that you can "just do it," without giving it much thought. Go into traditional cafes and see how espresso is prepared, from coffee beans ground 2-3 hours before, without measuring the dose, and using the tamper that comes with the grinder, if it's even tamped.

Specialty coffee is the exact opposite.

You need certain teams, precision and knowledge. AND coffee.

By the way, This is the reason why many coffee shops fail when they try to introduce Specialty into their menus.

Let's assume they have the right equipment, and they probably have the right coffee.

But there's a big problem in people's minds, to begin with. Years of watching people brew commercial coffee makes it hard to believe that you need to be knowledgeable when it comes to specialty coffee. And you need to have that knowledge. And you have to be precise. Measure ALL, ALL THE TIME.

Because commercial coffee basically tells you, “You don’t need to think about it too much, it’s easy, it’s just coffee.”

And Specialty Coffee says “measure everything.”

But measuring everything is difficult.

So many baristas don't do it.

So many coffee shops fail to serve specialty coffee for that reason.

There is an infinite difference between a well-extracted coffee and a coffee underextracted. And to not get that underextracted You have to know what you are doing in general, and what you have done, with that particular shot.

For me, it goes like this. I prefer a well-extracted specialty coffee. And then I prefer a commercial coffee. Saying that… With poorly made specialty coffee, you pay more, you get a barista who breaks the rules, and the coffee shop doesn't forgive them for that. But the person drinking that coffee, with all the mistakes made… is you.

And here comes the nightmare of every toaster, who is in some ways a perfectionist.

You have no control over how your coffee will be prepared after you sell it.

You choose the green coffee to buy, among other things. You find a roast profile for that coffee. You roast it. You sell it.

But after that… it's terra incognita. The most important thing—your customer's satisfaction—depends on how well they make their coffee. It depends on their education and their palate.

For example, if your customer makes filter coffee with an espresso grind, ~~you're screwed~~. Or when they don't know how to adjust the espresso machine. Again. Or when they use a blade grinder. Or pre-ground coffee. Or when they use your coffee two months after the roasting date.

Education and knowledge are key to specialty coffee for that reason. Because unlike commercial coffee, there are certain rules and a certain level of precision that must be observed. Because "Good coffee doesn't come from nowhere." That's why you'll often hear people in specialty coffee talking about educating the customer. Because high-level satisfaction is deeply connected to knowledge.

I started writing about the despair of the specialty coffee roaster, but I'm going to end with another thought I just had.Perhaps the satisfaction of Specialty also comes from the fact that it's not easy? After all, as we all know, we begin to appreciate things much more when we understand how hard they are to do.

Tag: roaster

Once again on the water issue

“Out of control” – or the desperation of the coffee roaster