Another interesting take on the water/coffee argument...

[Dimal]

Thought this might be interesting for some of us...

Secret to perfect cup of coffee lies in the quality of the water researchers say - Telegraph

Mal.

[chokkidog]

Well spotted Mal!

I saw something on this the other day.

A new client has a spring on his property and wants to use the water for his business.

I'm interested to see how it goes.

Move over hipsters, the geek baristas are in da house!

Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine – UK Barista Champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood Diving Deep into Water Science

[MrJack]

High magnesium ion levels were found to improve the process of extracting the coffee flavour from the bean, though high bicarbonate levels were bad for flavour.

Sodium rich water, such as that produced by water softeners, was also not beneficial to taste, according to chemist Christopher Hendon of the University of Bath

Interesting. The article does go on to say that the industry is typically more concerned about the effects of scale.

I noticed that they mention he used "computational chemistry" techniques for the study. Now, my only exposure to computational chemistry (protein folding in unix) leads me to suspect there was no actual physical experimentation done.

Has anyone seen the journal paper who can confirm?

[Dimal]

Now, my only exposure to computational chemistry (protein folding in unix) leads me to suspect there was no actual physical experimentation done.

No reason why you couldn't follow that one up with the author yourself mate...

Mal.

[forrest]

Interesting reading. I remember being amazed by the difference in end result when my mates were setting up a microbrewery in the Gisborne area using tank water instead of tap water. They had perfected their recipes in Melbourne using tap water and when they did exactly the same brew with rain water it was a completely different beer (in all aspects, different extraction levels leading to different final gravity/alcohol levels, completely different level of darkness/colour, different malt profile and vastly different flavour), so they ended up having to add salts to the rain water to bring it back to where they wanted it. So many variables, the mind boggles.