The Relationship Between Coffee And Water

Not all water is created equal

You might be reading this blog post and thinking to yourself, "surely water is just water." Well, we are here to tell you that you this is not the case, and the relationship between water and coffee is far more complex than most people realise. Considering that water typically comprises of more than 98% of filter coffee and 88-92% of espresso coffee, it is not surprising that the impact it has can be huge. Luckily for us, coffee can be fairly consistent and likes to play by the rules, so to begin, let's look at a few truths that apply to the relationship between water and coffee. 

1. If your water is inconsistent, your brews will also be inconsistent.
2. If your water is bad, your brews will be bad, consistently.
3. Good quality water can drastically improve your brews.
4. Having one less variable in your brews allows you to more accurately tweak your recipes.

With these points in mind, let's look at what factors we need to be considering in our water in order for it to be optimised for brewing coffee.

Flavour

Almost all water contains a plethora of minerals. The amount of minerals in your water is referred to as its hardness or softness; the more minerals you have in your water, the harder it is and vice versa. This is measured as the total dissolved solids or TDS; the TDS of your water tells you what percentage of your water is dissolved compounds. Minerals in your water affect your coffee's flavour in two very distinct ways: minerals have their own unique flavour characteristics and minerals have a significant impact on your ability to extract coffee from the coffee grounds.

The taste of water

Let's start off with the obvious - we've all had tap water that tastes like chlorine, and it goes without saying that we don't want coffee that tastes like a swimming pool. The most common undesirable minerals found in water are chlorine and fluoride. Their largely unpleasant, chemical flavours are often strong enough to carry through the brew and can leave lingering unpleasant flavours. High quantities of metals such as iron can also result overpowering metallic flavours in your brew.

Not all minerals in water are bad though, and no minerals (distilled water) is worse (we'll get to that in the next section). Generally speaking, magnesium and calcium will improve the taste of your water and give it more texture. When applied to coffee, these two compounds will offer distinct differences in the body of your coffee, with calcium highlighting creamier, more textured body and magnesium highlighting a brew's vibrant and acidic characteristics. Of all the minerals found in water, magnesium is definitely the one that has the most notable positive impact.

Minerals such as salt can also act as flavour enhancers, activating certain taste receptors on the palate and making the flavour experience seem more full and nuanced. It might even bring new flavours forward. Having said this, these can quickly become overpowering and only the smallest amounts are desirable.

Water's effect on extraction

Minerals in water are also essential if you want to achieve good extraction of your coffee. To put it simply, the delicious compounds in coffee need something to bond to in order to be drawn out of the coffee grounds and into your drink. Water that is too soft or distilled water will result in low levels of extraction and coffee that lacks body and character.

Having said that, more definitely doesn't always equate to better. Water for coffee is a delicate balancing act. Although the right minerals have a positive impact on brewing, flavour and extraction there is a finite limit to the amount of soluble material that can be dissolved in water - ergo, if the water is too saturated with mineral ions, there will not be enough "room" for flavour compounds from the coffee to dissolve.

Water & your equipment

Limescale can be a massive issue when it comes to maintaining your coffee equipment. Limescale is a build-up of minerals inside your equipment that can have a huge impact on how well it works as well as its longevity. Limescale can build up on your heating elements, causing your machinery to become significantly less efficient, or inside your pipes, causing inconsistencies and even blockages.

This is where the double-edged sword of calcium comes into play. Calcium can be a wonderful compound for flavour, as it adds a distinct richness and texture to your coffee, however, calcium is the number one culprit in limescale buildup in automatic coffee machines. Although calcium is potentially desirable in manual brewing, it is something that you ideally want to avoid in your machines. It seems that all water is not created equal and how you're brewing can have an impact on what water you want to use.

Regardless of whether you are using hard or soft water in your coffee machines, limescale is something to be consistently aware of; even soft water will begin to cause issues over time. 

What is the solution (pun intended)

If you want the perfect water for coffee, there are a few options. Some take a little more work than others; it largely depends how much detail you're willing to go into and the amount of control you want to take.

DIY

If you fancy yourself a scientist, you can create your own water for coffee. You can experiment with adding various minerals, adjusting the TDS, tweaking the PH and creating the perfect water for your everyday brew. This option is no doubt for the extreme coffee nerd.

If this is something that interests you, the SCA has published guidelines on water for coffee, and this would be a great place to start. Check out the SCA's guidelines here.

Ion exchange filters

Ion exchange filters offer a fantastic everyday solution to improving the quality and consistency of your everyday drinking water. These filters remove unwanted chemicals and use an ion exchange to exchange minerals you don't want with minerals you do want. Essentially, the TDS of your water will remain mostly unchanged, but the compounds in the water will be far more suited to brewing tasty coffee.

We're particularly impressed by the BWT Penguin Water Filter. When stacked up against water designed specifically for specialty coffee on a cupping table, we actually found the BWT filter to offer the best tasting brew with several coffees.

Bottled water

Although we couldn't recommend this as a daily use case (the waste associated is astronomical), as a once off when you're out and about or on holiday, the right bottled water is a simple and accessible solution that will offer a great improvement on tap water.

It's all about the variables

Even though it might seem like an inconsequential thing, the impact of water on coffee will surprise you; everyone at CCB was quite taken aback by how much of a difference changing the water made in our HQ experiments. At the end of the day, brewing great coffee is all about managing variables; the realisation that water is not a constant (but with a little bit of work it can be) is a great step towards brewing better coffee every day. 

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. We'd love to hear about your experiments and experiences with water for coffee!

Can You Afford To Make Specialty Coffee At Home?

Many people are under the impression that drinking specialty coffee at home is out of reach. With bags of specialty coffee ranging from R100-R200 (and upwards for the really exotic stuff), and the initial cost of the setup being quite substantial a lot of people struggle to justify the costs of brewing specialty coffee at home.

The Economics Of Home Brewing

We've looked at the numbers and we disagree; after doing the maths, it actually turns out to be significantly cheaper. In fact, compared to drinking coffee at your local cafe or drinking capsule coffee, you can pay off an entry level home brewing setup in as little as a few months with just the money you save. If you would like to punch your own numbers in and do some of your own calculations, you can access our spreadsheet with all of our formulae here. Feel free to enter the details into your own version of the spreadsheet and see what your numbers deliver!

Below we have a number of specific scenarios that we have looked at. To start off, let's just look at a few assumptions we have made on the costs of coffee.  Most of this is based on averages, but if these numbers look way off from yours, try put yours into your own copy of the spreadsheet.

Basic Manual Brewing At Home vs Filter Coffee Out

What you need:

• Coffee maker
• Coffee grinder
• Scale

Given that this is the starting point, we looked at this scenario with a minimal, budget-friendly setup in mind. With the typical type of entry-level gear available, you can get a brewer, a grinder and a scale for just shy of R3000. Let's assume you would usually drink two cups of coffee a day, bought from a local cafe. The money spent on your home brew set-up will be made back in only three months! 

Obviously we understand that it's not just about the money, you might have a great relationship with your local cafe, and we think that's a great thing. It's actually still worth it if you want to split the difference and have one coffee at the cafe and and brew one at home. We adjusted the number of cups to one and the figures below show that if you do this, you will have the setup paid off within 5 months.

Although we looked at milk in our calculations, it made a negligible difference. The figures above were calculated using 18g of coffee per brew and drinking it black.

Batch Brew At Home vs Filter Coffee Out

What you need:

• Batch brew coffee maker
• Coffee grinder (you're probably going to want to go electric for this one)
• Scale

This option makes particular sense if there are a lot of people that need coffee! If you are feeding a family of coffee fanatics, or maybe live in a house share of coffee nerds, this is definitely a good option for you. A batch brewer, grinder and scale will set you back about R8000. The table below is based on 2 cups a day and shows that this setup will pay for itself in as little as 6 months.

Given that this setup is a great option for lots of coffee, we also looked at a scenario for a couple. If we double the number of cups per day, you suddenly have a really great setup that has been paid for in 3 months.

Basic Espresso Setup vs Espresso Coffee Out

What You Need:

• Entry Level Espresso Machine
• Entry Level Espresso Grinder

This is where we start to get to the big hitters and things start to get a little more interesting. The cost of milk in lattes and flat whites begin to make a big difference in the operating costs; they really do add up! Our assumptions here are based on a Rancilio Home Espresso Bundle which, at the time of writing this, will set you back in the region of R22000. We know it might seem like quite a chunk of change but based on 2 flat whites a day (using a standard 18g dose), this will be completely recouped in as little as 18 months. Given that this type of equipment can last many years if well cared for, this makes it a good investment!

High-End Espresso Setup vs Espresso Coffee Out

What You Need:

• High-End Domestic Espresso Machine
• High-End Domestic Espresso Grinder

The ultra premium domestic espresso setup really is a labour of love. Even with the savings you will make brewing at home, it is a long journey to pay off. This sort of set-up is for the real espresso enthusiast who is willing to dedicate time and energy into making the best coffee possible. It's tricky to put numbers to this setup; what we would consider a "high-end" domestic espresso setup ranges from in the region of R30,000 all the way up to R250,000 for the BEST everything. For argument's sake, let's use a ~R60,000 setup. Based on 2 x 18g flat whites a day, this espresso machine will pay itself off in 43 months. It's hard work, but if you love espresso, it is definitely worth it!

The Capsule Argument

We also included capsule coffee in our calculations. There are a few points about capsule coffee that you should be aware of. On the surface, it seems that capsule coffee is quite affordable, and in some cases, even more affordable than manual brewing. The graph below shows the cost of capsules (based on the price of a popular brand), compared to the cost of brewing a cup at home, however this cost is an illusion.

Most capsules only contain about 5g-7g of ground coffee; this is quite a vast difference to the 17g-20g used to brew most filter or espresso-based drinks. The calculation above shows the cost difference based on a one-to-one ratio. It treats one 15g manual brew as the same thing as one 5g capsule. Of course, not all coffees are created equal. The reality is that one capsule does not contain the same amount of coffee (or caffeine for that matter) as one manual brew. In the table below, we have included a calculation which adjusts the capsule cost to the same quantity of coffee. In other words, 1 x 15g cup coffee = 3 x 5g capsules.

As you can see, when you take into account the difference in the amount of coffee and the fact that you will not be satisfied with a 1:1 comparison of cups of coffee to capsules of coffee, it quickly becomes apparent that capsules are quite astronomically expensive. We included the cost of the capsule machine in our break even point calculation.

The Major Players

This has proven an interesting experiment for us. It helped us to realise that things are not quite as black and white as we thought they were. For example, we were convinced that milk would be a big deal, it turns out that while it has an substantial impact in the cost of flat whites and lattes, we were surprised that a drop of milk in your filter coffee is pretty much negligible, but we're still going to encourage you to drink it black.

Another surprising factor was that the cost of your coffee makes very little difference in the bigger picture. Using R120 coffee vs using R150 coffee has a difference of 27 to 29 months to pay off a R60,000 setup and makes no discernible difference in the time taken to pay off smaller setups. Brewing your own coffee will actually allow you to purchase more expensive specialty coffees. Isn't that a fantastic thing to realise?!

Another factor that proved to be far more significant than we'd initially thought was the adjusted cost of capsule coffee. At the same cost as a coffee in a cafe, capsule coffee just is not worth the money! If you're happy drinking just 5g of coffee a time (and don't mind it stale), then capsules might be for you, but if you want a proper cup, you're going to need another solution.

At the end of the day, the biggest factor that impacts how long it would take to pay off your setup was the number of cups you drink per day. The more coffee you drink, the bigger the incentive to make at least some of your coffees at home (and the fancier the coffee gear that you can justify buying)!

Final Thoughts

With all the numbers in front of us, we think that specialty coffee in the comfort of your own home is accessible to most of us, at least those that regularly drink coffee out. We kept the setup costs to the bare minimum here, but if you have been bitten by the coffee bug, you can keep going and upgrade your setup to include fancy carafes, pouring kettles and multiple types of brew methods. It seems that the economics of home brewing can easily justify it.

With that being said, we don't want this to be all about the money. While there are obvious benefits to your wallet when it comes to home brewing, there are also other benefits that are a little more difficult to quantify. Home brewing offers you the opportunity to learn a new skill and explore coffee brewing with newfound fervour. It will allow you to try different coffees of different processing methods, origins and roasters more easily. It will also get you involved in the sometimes frustrating but often rewarding process of getting those wonderful flavours out of those little beans. Our hopes are that it will take your appreciation of this wonderful beverage to a whole new level.

6 Reasons Why Coffee Is Nothing Like Wine

Once you’ve worked in the coffee industry for a while, it’s basically unavoidable. You will wind up participating in conversations about how coffee is just like wine. If you work in coffee in Cape Town, a city that is surrounded by world-class vineyards, it’s probably even more inevitable. I have to confess, I’ve probably been the one to lead a discussion on the parallels more than a handful of times over the years.

There are good reasons for these comparisons to come up of course. I think the coffee industry may be particularly fond of them because, whether due to longevity or better marketing, the wine industry has arguably done a better job of communicating with the public about how to appreciate the nuance, complexity and variety in wine. It’s helpful to use wine as an analogy when we specialty coffee lovers talk about terroir, fermentation, plant varieties, farming practices, and all these things that influence flavour in both of our beloved beverages.

My colleague Matt, has done a great job of expanding on some of these similarities in his companion blog post: 6 Reasons Why Coffee Is Just Like Wine.

Despite all those similarities and helpful parallels, I’ve found myself thinking more about what’s different between coffee and wine recently though. This may be a reaction to conversations I’ve had where people (who are in neither industry) have tried to draw conclusions about how to expand specialty coffee in South Africa, based on observations about what they see happening in wine around the world. They’re both specialty beverages derived from single crops, so the dynamics of the industries must be the same right?!

I don’t think so.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised how fundamentally different coffee and wine are, particularly from the perspective of the dynamics of the industry. There may be parallels in the influences on flavour, and there may be lessons to learn from the wine industry on how to communicate about flavour with the public, but the coffee industry is a fundamentally different beast. I think that understanding these differences is important both to the enjoyment of and success in coffee. Here are some of the most important ones.

1. Age is not coffee’s friend

Let’s start with an obvious (though not often reflected on) difference. Coffee lives fast and dies young. Most wines will have a couple of years in them once they’ve been bottled. Some will last the better part of a decade. Some of the best wines will be great for generations. I’ve tasted wine that was older than I was at the time. Thankfully, I haven’t had to go through that experience with coffee.

Roasted coffee will taste good for 4-6 weeks from roast on average. If it’s roasted dark, used for espresso, or perhaps just a coffee that seems to be in a rush, it can be a lot less than that. Even unroasted, coffees really only last 1-2 years. You’re basically never going to taste a coffee that wasn’t grown and harvested within the last handful of years, at least not a good one.

Why does this matter? It fundamentally changes the nature of consumption and conversation around coffee. For starters, no one is ever going to build a collection of coffee beans (at least I hope not) but many wine lovers will have their collection of wine. To add insult to injury, some of those stashed wines may actually be improving in quality as they sit there, provided the conditions are right and it’s a wine made to age. I don’t think any coffee is improving past a couple of weeks from roast date, or a few months from harvest.

How does this play out for coffee lovers? It means that a lot of the time, when you’re waxing lyrical about the amazing coffee you discovered a couple of weeks ago to your friend, you don’t actually have any more of it! Either you or your friend have to go get another bag, freshly roasted, and that’s only possible if the roaster still has more of that coffee. Inevitably, that coffee will disappear, and you will never try that lot again. You may never even try that farm’s coffee again. That’s just the ephemeral nature of specialty coffee.

2. The growers and makers of coffee are not the same people

For most of the specialty end of the wine industry, the people who grow the wine and make the wine are the same people. At the very least, they are part of the same company. Of course, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, wine is made on the vineyard that grew it. That has huge implications for how wine is made, traded and sought out.

Lovers of wine will know the vineyards that produce their favourites. Those predilections will unconsciously be associated with all aspects of wine production, from the variety, to the farming techniques, to the winemaking practices. Coffee lovers may discover their favourite roasters (as they should) and return to them for trusted guidance on what to drink, but those roasters will be offering up coffees grown by dozens of different farmers from around the world, and that selection will be constantly changing. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is part of the fun of coffee, but it’s a fundamentally different experience.

3. There’s one more key step in the production chain

There are of course dozens, if not hundreds of steps in the production of both wine and coffee. I don’t mean to oversimplify; however, if you look at these at a macro level, the reality is that coffee has at least one more important one.

Like wine, coffee is grown, harvested, processed & “made”, but unlike wine, that “made” part needs to be split into two parts. Coffee first needs to be roasted, and then it needs to be brewed. These are both critical steps and essential prerequisites to the enjoyment of a good cup of coffee. The reality is that this makes the production chain more complex. It introduces an exponentially larger amount of possible combinations of variables that may influence the beverage’s flavour, and this is in comparison to an already very complex beverage!

4. You actually need to make coffee!

It’s definitely worth zeroing in on this last step in coffee’s production chain as well. This may sound incredibly obvious, but the fact that you need to make coffee just before consuming it is an absolutely massive difference to the world of wine. Sometimes I envy people in the wine industry on this point. All their customers have to do is open the bottle and drink it. Maybe they have to serve it at the right temperature; they probably should buy some decent glasses, but really, it’s relatively hard for them to screw it up.

In coffee, on the other hand, you could hand someone the very best bag of beans you ever tasted, and they could make something horrible with it if they didn’t know what they were doing. You can’t make a great cup of coffee from bad beans, but you sure can make a terrible cup of coffee from excellent beans. Tragic, isn’t it?

This problem is compounded by the fact that there are dozens, if not hundreds, heck, if not thousands of ways to make coffee. Even worse, each one tastes a bit different! Someone can taste a great wine at a farm or a restaurant, and buy a bottle of that wine and enjoy pretty much the same flavour experience at home. Most people will never get close to replicating the same flavour experience that they have in a cafe at home.

5. Serving great coffee requires equipment

Part of the challenge of replicating those flavour experiences is skill, no doubt, but the other part is equipment. Coffee makers and grinders vary in price and complexity but you need at least one of each to make your coffee. What does someone need to enjoy a glass of wine at home? Basically, just a mouth; maybe a corkscrew, but even that is going out of fashion.

This is where the coffee industry often gets snagged, because what do specialty cafes use to make coffee? They use machines that cost more than your car did. Is it surprising then that many drinkers of coffee decide that they really can only enjoy high quality coffee when they’re out? I personally believe that they’re mistaken, but I don’t blame them for thinking that. The coffee equipment required is a serious impediment to the widespread appreciation of specialty coffee at home, albeit one that we’re working on!

6. Milk & sugar

Man, have I got beef with milk and sugar. The latter has an outright ban at Cape Coffee Beans HQ, and while I’ve relented on the former, no one gets to consume milk in their coffee without a quip from me about milk being a substance that exists to turn small cows into big ones.

Our task in the coffee industry is seriously hampered by the fact that the vast majority of the people who drink our beloved beverage love to mix it with other things. Why?! Imagine if the wine industry needed to contend with huge amounts of people sweetening or diluting their products with other drinks. I suppose the whisky industry can probably sympathise with us here.

We have a real challenge in coffee. Most people don’t like coffee, they like coffee-flavoured sweetened milk. Maybe they would like coffee, if they’d ever tried a decent example of it, but the reality is that most people react to the mention of black coffee with a face that looks like they just smelled a fart. They are probably remembering that one time that they had one sip of black instant or crappy robusta-based grocery store blends because they somehow managed to run out of both milk and sugar at the same time.

The wine industry is lucky not to have to contend with a cultural norm of adulterating their product. This is one thing that I particularly envy, because the reality is that once you put milk and sugar in them, the differences between good and bad coffees are definitely muted.

Coffee... It's complicated

If you’ve made it to the end of this writing rant (a wrant maybe?) you’re probably thinking, “sheesh, coffee is complicated!”

Bingo! Coffee is really complicated.

That is both a blessing and a curse. It offers a wonderful world of nuance, variety and exploration. It allows the consumer to participate in the process in a way that I don’t think any wine lover would even think of. The challenge is that it makes the barriers to entry into the wonderful world of speciality coffee quite a bit higher. It makes marketing and growing the industry and individual businesses much more challenging. It can make specialty coffee seem less accessible, and even make some less educated consumers doubt the value of what is on the other side of that barrier.

Thankfully, there are more and more of us who get it, and who are helping to spread the word. Yes, it’s complicated, but it’s definitely worth it!

About the author

Phaedon is the founder of Cape Coffee Beans. He's a former strategy consultant turned eCommerce guy who came to South Africa for 6 months and wound up staying a decade (and counting). Back in 2013, he decided to try to turn a budding interest in coffee into a business and so Cape Coffee Beans was born. These days he spends most of his time thinking about how to expand the reach of specialty coffee in South Africa. He's also pretty partial to a good glass of South African wine.