Water and coffee: Water quality in brewing

Coffee as a drink, is mainly water, and the quality of water directly relates to the way we perceive flavours, this is important both in espresso and soft brewing.

The flavour of acidity in coffee is effected by the ph, and chemical make up of the water. High acid coffees can loose their acidic flavour because of water makeup, and espresso machines become scaled.

We all use industry standard filter kits on water for brewing, which are really just a starting point for treatment, but gets very expensive to go to next step.

lime scale build up

When you buy a Slayer, you only get a warranty when proper water treatment processing is done, in NZ this costs over $5000 to set up. This is the next step in filtration, but something which isn’t viable in a wholesale cafe market.

The new dual boiler espresso machines have flow restrictors with hot water running through them which scale up and block injectors quickly, causing regular problems in regions where water has a high TDS.

The water filters we use are Everpure 2CB-GW, which do the following:

• Reduces fine dirt and particles
• Carbon block filter polishes water for high quality beverage and food applications
• Reduces chlorine, taste, odor, and other offensive contaminants
• Reduces limescale build-up that can damage the machine

As you may know, even with these filter kits, lime scale does build up, and fast depending on your water content. So globally every espresso machine has this problem.

I wonder how water quality treatment in coffee will progress, will we see better filter kits at affordable prices, will we be running ‘bottled’ water through our espresso machines, or will we continue to need to de-scale espresso machines every year or so?

Pour over vrs push button brewing

Auto brewers, the future of coffee again??

Interesting article saying brewing machines even bulk brewers, can and do produce a consistant brew every time- because there is no “human error”

The more work I do on soft brewing- the more I can see the importance for a soft brewing machine, just like we have for espresso. There are so many variables and controlling them in cafe setting is tough.

It should be said that this is next level stuff, what we are trying to achieve is “the best cup we can- every time” not just “good brews” and this level of difference may only be noticeable when cupped side by side, and when a good knowledge of the origin potential is contrasted with cup.

Strangely this comes from Slayer site which doesn’t have programable settings, its all manual.

Here is a machine which makes soft brewing to any brew parameter viable in busy cafe.

Bunn Trifecta

I tried every coffee available at SCAA and the best soft brew was from the Trifecta, and it is the most usable due to programable features

René