Third Wave Water: Minerals for a tastier coffee

Third Wave Water

Around 2005, one of our colleagues took a tour of Stone Brewing in Escondido, California. During the tour, he learned that one of the first steps they take when making their ale is to extract all the minerals from the water and then rebuild the water using a custom mineral blend.h

The custom blend was designed to mimic the water used in the Burton region of England, an area renowned for producing excellent ales for hundreds of years. Stone knew what they were doing. They have won numerous awards, and many other microbreweries pay close attention to getting the right water profile for their beer recipes.

But what about coffee?

The general advice has long been a vague guideline to use clean water and that the water itself should taste good. In other words, don't try to make good coffee with water you don't like. This simple advice works, but it's not the end of the story.

Coffee may taste better or worse, depending on the mineral profile of the water used. In Italy, the burnt profiles get darker if you go from the north to the south. And if you go to the Scandinavian countries, the mineral profile there will match their light burn profiles.

Chromatic Coffee in Santa Clara, California, has two water entrances to their espresso machine. All water is tailored through filtration to obtain the same TDS (total dissolved solids) to match the roasting profile of the two espressos. The lighter espresso gets water with less TDS. How's the taste? Unbelievable. One of our employees, I spent a year in the Bay Area, and they were the best. They extracted delicate flavours from espresso that you never even thought possible.

Adapted water for us

Roasters and cafes adjust their water profiles to improve their coffee taste. What about the homebrew? This is the problem that Third Wave water has addressed. They have created two custom mineral profiles: Classic and Espresso. Add a packet to a litre of distilled water, and you now have a water profile that should make your coffee taste better.

Third Wave Water adds magnesium for sweetness and calcium for balanced fullness. The highlight is the acidity in the coffee, where the profile has low alkalinity. We asked Third Wave to explain the difference between the two mineral profiles. This was their response:

"The primary difference between the Espresso and Classic profile is the buffer ( potassium bicarbonate ) added to the Espresso formula. This ingredient was added because espresso machines have a unique problem with high pressure and high temperature, which increases the chances of the minerals separating from the water. The Classic profile also uses a touch of sodium (10mg/300ml cup of coffee) instead of the buffer ingredient, providing a clearer cup of coffee for filter coffee machines, cafetière, manual filter methods, etc." 

Testing Third Wave water

Since Third Wave offers the ideal mineral content, you probably don't want to add it directly to anything other than distilled water. If you have a water filtration system that gets most of the minerals out of the water, you can try it. But only a direct test with the packet mixed with distilled water will let you know how much difference you can detect.

The first thing we did was compare our tap water, which we use to make coffee, to the classic profile of the Third Wave water mixed with distilled water. Water versus water. If we couldn't tell the difference with plain water, it would be unlikely that we would once the coffee was brewed.

Where we live, the water quality is already ideal for coffee. Because of this, we don't expect to notice as much difference as in a region with less perfect water for brewing coffee. To our pleasant surprise, the Third Wave water was better. The word that came to mind that best describes the difference was silky smooth. The taste of the water, which was clean, lingered on the tongue just a little longer than our tap water. Our tap water is excellent, so the Third Wave noticeably improved the taste was impressive.

These results were then repeated on brewed coffee. We mainly drank lighter roast coffee and noticed that some delicate flavours were more pronounced. They stayed with us just a little longer than the same coffee with untreated water. The coffee seemed more balanced with the Third Wave water.

Conclusion

Third Wave water is an excellent option for coffee lovers looking to improve their water profile for brewing coffee.

If you're curious to see how much of a difference an optimized mineral profile makes to coffee, try Third Wave water. You will have to search because it is not always available and you will probably have to shop at a foreign store.