In the last article we looked at how roast level can erase the flavor of good coffee.

And that dark roasts can be a way of hiding up low quality beans.

Check it out here.

But even with great beans, roasted well, your coffee could still come out lackluster.

Why?

It could be your water.

Why Water Filters Aren’t Enough

When I first bought Revel 77 in Spokane, I wanted to serve the best coffee possible, but I noticed our recipes were different from everyone else’s.

At first I thought it was because were mavericks. We didn’t blindly follow rules. Rather we danced to the beat of our own drum and found better ways to make coffee, because we were freethinkers or whatever.

But none of that was true.

We just had messed up water. And I discovered that this is something many of the best coffee shops, including Spokane, don’t understand.

Let me explain.

Back before we roasted our own beans, we sourced our coffee from other roasters. Some of them were local to Spokane.

And I noticed they all tasted different at our shop.

Being mavericks aside, I wanted to know why.

I experimented, isolating variables, but couldn’t figure it.

I overlooked the water because I thought we had a good filtration system.

It was big and fancy and the filters cost a lot of money, and the people who installed them told the original owners they were perfect for the shop.

But that was furthest from the truth.

Finally, I decided the water was the only thing I hadn’t considered and decided to test it.

I brewed the same coffee with 3 different waters and did a blind taste test.

I tried our coffee with filtered water, unfiltered water, and bottled water from the store.

I was shocked.

Our coffee made with our filtered water tasted the worst out of the bunch, like an entirely different coffee.

It was thin, vegetal, and acidic in comparison.

The coffee made with the bottled water tasted great. It was balanced and full.

The coffee made with our unfiltered water was muddy and not as vibrant as the coffee made from bottled water, but still far better than what was coming out of our filters.

So I bought a water test kit and ph meter and discovered our filters were all wrong.

First off, they weren’t removing enough scale, so our equipment was being damaged, and the way they worked made our water acidic.

So acidic in fact that it would kill trout. No joke. That was on the ph guide.

I suddenly understood why our recipes were different. We were unknowingly trying to compensate for our bad water!

I immediately bypassed the filters and switched us over to a Reverse Osmosis system as soon as I could.

And the difference was night and day.

All of this taught me that your water is a huge player in your coffee that often gets overlooked.

When people come into the shop and ask how to improve their how coffee game, I used to jump straight to what kind of grinder they were using.

Now I go to water, it’s that important.

If you’ve got bad water, it doesn’t matter how good your grinder is, it won’t taste good.

Other parts of the country (and world) will have different issues, but for those living in Spokane, the main problem is hard water scale. And carbon filters aren’t enough, scale passes right though those.  

To get the best coffee in Spokane you need to remove the scale, either with a water softener or RO system.

But if you don’t have one of those, no fret, I have a solution for you.

To simplify the situation for everyone (people in Spokane and around the world), I recommend usinh Third Wave Water [Link], at least initially.

Third Wave Water pioneered making mineral packets that perfectly balance distilled water for coffee.

It’ super simple. Just get a gallon of distilled water, throw a packet of Third Wave Water in there, and brew with that.

If you don’t taste an immediate difference, I will be very surprised.

From there, you can go on a deeper dive if you want or just keep using Third Wave Water.

Now that we’ve got great beans, roasted well, and we’re using the right water, we have to brew the coffee correctly.

Even with great beans that were roasted well, and using good water, you can still mess up a good coffee.

That’s what we’ll be discussing in the next and final article.

Click here to learn how to brew like a pro.

Until then, happy sipping.

Sean Edwards
Owner/Head Roaster