Do you want to know what’s crazier than writing 24 articles about making coffee? You’re right, writing 25 of them. Welcome back. Today we’re looking at the influence of the water used to brew coffee on its taste. Coffee is mostly water, so it makes sense to consider it as a variable.

Primer: I hate this idea

Buying water for daily consumption in plastic bottles while perfectly fine water is delivered to your house via a huge system of pipes is an environmental crime in my opinion. (I know, I’m privileged in Europe) It doesn’t help either that many companies selling water have a track record of crimes against humanity that is just staggering.

So yeah, I hate the idea of buying water in bottles to make coffee.

Trends

Yet, it seems to be the thing of the moment to treat or replace tab water before using it in coffee. There’s a famous french influencer, Tom Cooks, who recently made a video about the topic. Several people sent me the video because “they thought of me”. So whenever they see a video where a guy goes into ridiculous detail about coffee they think of me. And who am I to blame them?

A quick summary of the video for the impatient who don’t want to spend 20 mins watching a guy discuss the flavor of water: He uses different kinds of water to brew coffee using the cupping method. This method is used by professional coffee tasters, because it eliminates all variables except for beans and the water.

He tries tab water, Brita-filtered tab water, de-mineralized water, re-mineralized water and a bunch of french water brands. Honestly, solid work on his part.

His conclusion is that tab water and Brita-filtered tab water produce rather bad tasting coffee. He likes de-mineralized, re-mineralized and two brands.

Let’s try this

I’m using Brita-filtered water. Wouldn’t it be funny if my coffee could be much better, or at least different, by switching to a different water source? Life has been too good lately, so a new variable in my coffee brewing should restore balance.

Setup

I’m not using the cupping method, because I only drink espresso. I’ll do a simple test: I’ll make one espresso with my Brita-filtered water and one with Volvic water (one of the brands Tom Cooks identified as “best”, which also happens to be a recommendation by the French Specialty Coffee Association apparently). I’ll taste them both and decide subjectively which one I like better.

Results

I wished for crazy results. Even though I don’t like the idea of having to buy bottled water, I’m still going for excellence in my coffee. Every clue is examined. You never know.

So this time I have to disappoint you. I couldn’t taste a big difference. My girlfriend couldn’t either. Both espressi were delicious though.

Summary

Water doesn’t make a big difference in my coffee setup.

It’s subjective of course. A little reminder: I’m making Italian style espresso. No specialty coffee. No fruity notes. No sugar. But a lot of love.