If you’re someone who likes to play around with and control each individual part of a recipe, then you probably enjoy the process of coffee brewing. There’s tons of factors to experiment with, like brew time, grind size, and water temperature. Another factor is water filtration.
In general, just as filtered water tastes different from tap water, coffee brewed with tap water will taste different from coffee brewed with filtered water. The composition of minerals and the hardness (amount of minerals) of your water can affect the taste to a large degree.
Since coffee is generally anywhere from 95 to 98 percent water, it stands to reason that your water composition will affect your coffee. Specifically, the minerals calcium, magnesium, and bicarbonate interact with coffee during the brew process.
Calcium and magnesium both act as flavor extractors, helping along the extraction process and transferring flavor from your ground beans into your cup. Bicarbonate helps regulate the process between the water and coffee. So when deciding how to filter, a simple water filter can help take some of the hardness out of your water for a purer taste. But if you wish to go all out, you can look into ways to change the very mineral composition of your water.
