How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour

For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about water’s impact on coffee flavour?

In this episode, I tell the story of how the specialty coffee community came to understand water chemistry: the pioneering work of the computational chemist Christopher Hendon and British roaster Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, the genesis of the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook, and where we are today understanding the impact of minerals on our water.

I strongly recommend listening to the two episodes before this one first: Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step & The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them

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Want to go deeper into water chemistry?

Read the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook
BWT White Paper on the effects of magnesium (German)
Christopher Hendon’s Instagram where he’ll announce his new version of his book, Water for Coffee
Do an online Certificate of Advanced Studies at the Coffee Excellence Centre

Season 3 of The Science of Coffee is made possible by these leading coffee organisations:

The Coffee Quest | BWT | TODDY | Algrano | Probat

Note: this is a reworked version of my 2022 episode Water for Brewing Coffee, including portions of my 2024 episode How to think like a scientist, part 2.