The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them
Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries
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Show Notes
550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise!
But then Earth changed—violently. The planet shifted from a peaceful, plant-eating paradise to a darker, more brutal world. And in this new world, the chemistry of water was forever altered.
This is the wild story of how earth-shaking forces and the spirits of long-dead critters ruin your coffees today.
This story will help you remember the two invisible ingredients in your water that have a huge impact on coffee flavour and your brewing equipment: calcium and hydrogen carbonate.
Read Marcia Bjonerud’s amazing book, Reading the Rocks
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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.
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