What Water Makes the Best Coffee? Is Nongfu Spring Suitable for Brewing Coffee? How to Make the Best Tasting Americano?

Many friends, after enjoying a delicious cup of coffee at FrontStreet Coffee, will buy a bag of the same beans to make at home. However, the coffee they make often tastes completely different from what they experience in the café. Even when using the same parameters and extraction methods, the flavor and texture of their coffee consistently falls short of that exceptional taste. Whenever friends ask about this issue, FrontStreet Coffee typically questions two things: the coffee grind and, crucially, the water used for brewing.

Whether for extraction or dilution, water typically accounts for over 90% of a black coffee's total volume. Therefore, water directly impacts coffee quality. This influence manifests in two main aspects: coffee flavor expression and coffee mouthfeel.

The Impact of Water on Coffee Extraction

When water acts as a solvent to extract coffee, its hardness level affects the dissolution of flavor compounds. The determining factor for water hardness is the mineral content! Although water may appear clear and impurity-free, most water actually contains minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium ions. These substances are key factors that influence the dissolution of coffee flavor compounds. Research shows that when water contains calcium ions, coffee's acidity can be better extracted, while when water contains magnesium ions, the extracted coffee will have richer sweetness and aroma. However, both share a common prerequisite: moderation.

In the "Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality" published by the World Health Organization, water softness and hardness levels are defined. When water hardness is below 200ppm, it's classified as soft water, while water hardness above 200ppm is classified as hard water. Generally, both hard water and pure water (without minerals) are unsuitable for coffee extraction. The reason is quite simple. Pure water, lacking mineral content, dissolves significantly fewer compounds, resulting in coffee with less complexity and requiring more extreme parameters for adjustment. Conversely, when water contains excessive minerals (too hard), it can also lead to difficulty in extracting compounds (and even bitterness). Therefore, the SCA recommends water hardness for coffee extraction to fall within the 75-250ppm range, with an ideal value of 150ppm.

The Impact of Water on Coffee Mouthfeel

In the article "Three Tips to Make Your Americano Taste Better," FrontStreet Coffee mentioned that in the process of making an Americano, water serves not only as a "solvent" but also takes on the role of diluting coffee concentration. Therefore, the quality of water's mouthfeel will directly impact the coffee.

Water mouthfeel refers to the taste of water itself—essentially our initial perception of water. In daily life, we often hear statements like "the mountain spring water from a certain place tastes sweeter" or "this mineral water tastes better than that one"—these all refer to water's mouthfeel, the sensation it provides when consumed. Similarly, water mouthfeel is affected by hardness, but not exclusively. Other factors like pH level also play a role. If we use water that is clean, lightly sweet, and soft to make an Americano, the resulting coffee will have a relatively fuller body, brighter character, and a sweet aftertaste. However, if we use hard, unfiltered tap water, the resulting Americano won't taste as good, the mouthfeel won't be as excellent, and may even lead to negative characteristics like astringency and bitterness.

This principle applies not only to coffee but to tea as well. Surely we all read about the tea master Lu Yu in elementary school textbooks! For example, Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty wrote the three-volume "Classic of Tea" that has been passed down for millennia (getting sidetracked here!). In this classic, tea master Lu Yu provided detailed classification and evaluation of water used for brewing tea. Well water, river water, and mountain water were his three categories, and he offered his assessment: "Well water is inferior, river water is medium, and mountain water is superior." This shows that whether for tea or coffee, the "quality" of the "solvent" itself is indeed worthy of attention. So the question arises: what water makes the best-tasting coffee?

What Water Makes the Best-Tasting Coffee?

Before discussing what water makes the best-tasting coffee, we can first eliminate unfiltered tap water from consideration. Although tap water in most cities can meet soft water standards (hardness below 200ppm) without filtration, as FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, water contains many other substances besides calcium and magnesium ions. For example, chlorine.

The reason we smell that swimming pool-like odor in tap water comes from trace amounts of residual chlorine. If this water is used to brew coffee, the coffee's clarity will decrease, resulting in muddled flavors, inferior mouthfeel, and even bitterness. However, there are solutions. If we use a filtration system to filter tap water, this problem can be resolved. This is why most coffee shops today use filtered tap water to make coffee. Additionally, there are many water products available on the market. Among them, a relatively affordable and well-known water product in the coffee community is Nongfu Spring. Nongfu Spring water has a hardness of 37ppm, and coffee brewed with it performs very consistently in terms of both compatibility and flavor.

This doesn't mean other water products are inferior—they just tend to be more "specialized," better suited for coffee beans with specific characteristics. For example, some waters are suitable for brewing dark roast beans, while others are suitable for light roast beans (some waters aren't suitable for brewing but have excellent mouthfeel, making them perfect for diluting coffee concentration, such as for Americanos). If you're interested, you can purchase and try them yourself, but when buying, it's best to pay attention to the TDS value on the label and the mineral content chart. If you want to pursue perfection, you can even prepare your own brewing water. This allows you to control the mineral content, and with proper formulation, you can naturally create the most suitable water for brewing coffee!

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