The Best Water for Coffee - An Introduction

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[jameshoffmann]

Notes & Corrections: I made an embarrassing mistake in this video. Brita filters exchange hydrogen ions, not sodium ions. Lots of commercial filters use sodium and lots use hydrogen. This was a silly mistake I deeply regret.
Also - I didn’t clarify that the home made, custom water is as bad as bottled water if you buy your deionised water in plastic bottles. It is just more flexible and able to produce more precise results.
I’ll update this comment with other corrections and notes as necessary.

[nitin]

How James Hoffmann has spoiled my coffee experience for ever:
1st Video: all you need is good coffee beans
2nd Video: ohh, coffee machine. anything less than $500 is cheap stuff
3rd Video: Buy grinder
4th Video: get rid of that crap tamper
5th Video: Introduction to distribution tool.
5th Video: c'mon you using tap water?
..

2021: You can't make a really good cup of coffee under gravity.

[stephend]

Minerals dissolved in water is, definitely a solution

[Enlgtend]

I don't drink coffee, never have, and yet somehow a random YouTube recommendation on "Why Modern Expresso Looks Ugly" lead to months of regular check-ins on a subject that I have never researched prior. I'm thoroughly invested. Great job as usual, James

[TeleCustom]

As a brewer of beer, I've long since pondered whether baristas consider water science in the same way as we do when brewing beer. As I delve deeper into brewing coffee, its great to see that this is 'a thing'. As a basic for water treatment, you can gas off chlorine from water overnight but chloramine is tougher - the easiest way is using campden tablets. In beer, the two minerals responsible for balancing the perception of malt sweetness to hop bitterness are chloride and sulphate, respectively. For less bitter styles, we tend to use a higher ratio of chloride to sulphate - this also gives a perception of a softer, more 'pillowy' mouthfeel. Interestingly (for coffee), in dark beers with highly roasted malts, the pH is driven downwards by these malts and we look to offset this astringency with a higher ratio of chloride to sulphate. The opposite is true of more traditionally bitter styles where we want a bitter twang. Not sure how many people will find this as interesting as me, or at all :D

[MattSena]

Last year, I was happy drinking instant. Since discovering your channel, I’ve purchased a moka pot, an aeropress, a grinder and a shitload of coffee and now you’ve presented yet another rabbit hole to jump into. My wallet is not going to be impressed.

[LBCBassKings]

Brewing coffee 2 years ago: Coffee, water, start.

Brewing coffee after binge watching James: I now speak Chinese.

[yitznewton]

As a beer brewer this is an interesting one for me. We're largely concerned with calcium, chloride, and sulfate ions, in addition to pH.

[brotein]

Me: Tap Water
JH: Hexagonally structured, deuterium free, hydrogen gas rich, infra-red bathed, 4C chilled, golden ratio mineralized, monk blessed dihydrogen monoxide.

[nigelfountain]

I am a barista who is training a new employee and it is so much fun to show them the difference between brewing water with our filtered/softened water vs brewing it with what comes out of the tap as well as all the other complexities of coffee

[ordoordo]

The water in my area is *insanely* hard, so for the longest time, I bought tons and tons of bottled water. A few years ago, I got tired of this and bought a Brita Purity C150 Quell ST, which I then connected directly to my espresso machine. To get full use of it, I also bought a faucet that had the normal cold/hot water but also a separate lever for purified water - I cannot remember the last time I descaled my kettle. I used to do it every month! Also not worrying about having water, was a HUGE weight off my shoulders :) When I did that, I also connected my drip tray to my drain - it was so amazing :)
With the right "head" on the filter, you can let some regular water back in the flow to increase minerals.

[JakobKsGarage]

We have extremely hard water here in eastern Denmark, so I boil it, cool it and filter it with a paper (coffee) filter.
Filter catches a lot of white calcium residue and the water tastes soft and like bottled mineral water afterwards.
Used it for 20 years in my La Pavoni, which has never needed descaling.
I am of course aware of the extra energy usage of heating coffee water twice, but I only boil the amount I need to fill the espresso machine water tank. And even with high Kwh prices it's a lot cheaper than bottled water, and you are not contributing to plastic waste.

[HochMusiker]

14:21 This madman is humble and honest enough to actually tell people to stop watching the video without begging his viewers to come back afterwards or anything normal like that. What has the world come to? Selflessness is surely not the solution!

[AntcnyLutskii]

I used to run a coffee shop and we would make custom mineralized water for both our espressos and batch brews. It sounds complicated at start, but once you get some guidelines (Barista Hustle or CAE offer you these) things are getting much easier. We had reversed osmosis, filtered water in a 19L food-grade multi-use plastic barrel and then added the salts. We used to use MgSo4 (which is Epsom salt, can be easily found in a pharmacy), CaSo4 (which is plaster or gypsum, can be also found in a pharmacy) and balanced these with NaHCO3 (which is standard table sodium that can be found everywhere for pennies). At first, we measured the amount of each salt with a TDS metre (bought for 20 pounds in the internet). We measure filtered water, it had around 5 ppm, added MgSo4 to get 20-25 overall ppm, then added CaSo4 to get 45-55 overall ppm and after that finished it with NaHCO3 in the range of 80 to 120 ppm. Later we would weight right amounts of salts on scales without checking water's TDS and added them to the water. That's it.

[Jellooze]

Next years video, "The best elevation above the sealevel for Coffee - An introduction"

[drmedwuast]

James Hoffmann - ruining days since 2014 💙

[MrSwmn]

A great way to do this relativity environmentally friendly, cheaply and without too much faff is to buy a 5 gallon jug and fill at an RO dispenser. Here in the US there are Primo or other brand's stations in many grocery stores where you can buy RO water for $0.35 a gallon. once you have your 5 gallons you only need to measure your additives once. I have bought and adjusted water this way for beer brewing for years.

[matussa]

What a coincidence, two weeks ago I did a tasting at home between 3 different waters at home. Pulled 3 espressos, bc I think its easier to get'em right three time in a row, same grind, same coffee, same everything. I live in México and here, most households buy 20L jugs of water, and there are many brands, from locally filtered companies, to Pepsi and Coke sub-brands. I brewed with a EPura (Pepsi), Bonafont (the biggest independent water company in Mex) and a locally owned, locally filtered company. I chose EPura because my wife ran an experiment at her university between the big waters and that brand had the "cleanest" water, the other two I had at my house already.
There was SUCH A BIG DIFFERENCE between the three waters, the locally filtered one being the better tasting. I presume because it's the "freshest" water and the other two had been going around for weeks in delivery trucks all over the city. Also because their factory is right below the volcanoes, so the raw water is probably in a more pure state, compared to what Pepsi or Coca Cola might use.
In conclusion, if you do a water test, you will ruin the way you look at coffee (once again) and you'll go into a pursuit for the best water possible. But it becomes another thing that you take into consideration when brewing, but once you find something you like, you enjoy your coffee much more.
Thanks James for making us care for the drink we love so much.

[djobokuwali]

I remember following this dude with 10k subs, and I was like...give it a bit this guy is gonna be Youtube's premier coffee snob. Well on his way.

[oliverwhimstermartinsen]

My attempt at a budget- and environmentally friendly solution:

1. Bought a water distiller off of amazon.
2. Mix tap and distilled water at a 1/10 ratio (I have really really hard water so obviously adjust for your local waters mineral contents ).


Thats it. Of course if you wanted more control and weren't as lazy as I am, you could add in the exact minerals the way James describes with deionised water as distilled water is (as far as I know, with a very limited understanding of it) pretty much the same as deionised water.
You can get the really expensive water distillers for coffee and the really cheap ones which as far as I can tell do the same - only they are marketed at preppers and such. I bought the cheap one (50 EUR) and it works perfectly and distills 4 liters of water at a time.

If your water has chlorine or other unpleasantries added to it you would probably be wise to include some active charcoal somewhere in the process.
Also my tap water happens to have a mineral ratio which lands me somewhere in the ballpark of good water with this method. If your water is really high in certain minerals and really low in others, you might have to mix your custom water with each individual mineral as James explains in the video.

As always your video was a great pleasure to watch James.