Taste and Flavour
Coffee Water’s Evolution in the Third Wave
As the specialty coffee movement began to advance in the early noughties, it took a long while for folks to realise how much of an impact water was having on their coffee quality. Our first key discovery in the way thechemistry of water impacted coffee quality was that roasters in soft water regions roasted darker than those in hard water areas. Over time, this widespread tendency came to be explained by the increase in the amount of buffer in the water in hard water areas.
Roasters using soft water in their cuppings will taste more sourness and acidity because they have less buffer available to reduce the acidity. They will therefore naturally attempt to reduce the acidity through the roasting process.