I have recently started experimenting with making my own water. Water out of my well is way to hard with very high mineral content. It also has iron and hydrogen sulphide which makes it taste poor. Coffee made with water out of the water softener is also poor. So what did I do? I have a reverse osmosis unit. We were making coffee with it for years but until recently we couldn’t figure out why our coffee was so bad. It turns out that RO water overextracts really bad. It makes coffee style, acidic and very bitter. I finally figured this out.
Now I remineralize my RO water using magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride and baking soda. I have my recipe down really nice now and our coffee is very good.
3 Likes
Yes, this is what third wave water uses. Water is critical.
1 Like
I sort of used the formula for third wave’s water for dark roast. Pretty high KH.
I just kept adding baking soda to my concentrate until the KH was over 100
Coffee taste’s great. We never drank french roast before but now French roast tastes full bodied and roasty instead of bitter.
2 Likes
This is the 65# bag i purchased from columbia shown above. I ground it with a magic bullet and sifted it with a flour sifter.
The SR800 also removes the husk off the bean. That is a big improvement from my whirly top popcorn popper i was using. @ramv they through in a couple pounds with the coffee roaster as well i mixed into the batch. It was an Arabica and not as good a grade of coffee as my other i purchased in bulk. Genuine origin has as good a coffee as anyone could want. I’m very happy @Melon with my magic bullet being used as a coffee grinder as long as i use a flour sifter to remove any chunks. As i said before be careful it can blow when you remove the lid and blow coffee all over you if you grind it shortly after roasting it. Coffee gases off for several days after roasting it. We have all the best gadgets nowadays!
This image below i posted earlier is the husks that are removed from the top of the SR800. It uses a winnowing process to blow thee husks into thee top of the machine like removing chaf from wheat. It can be left open which blows the chaff out of thee machine if you are roasting beans outside. The machine is a smart design.
The promotion makes the kit $295.00
3 Likes
Similar challenges plague beer breweries. Water quality plays a significant role in beverage quality. The same recipe brewed with a different water source might taste like a completely different beverage.
RO water is probably pretty close to distilled water on final product taste without re-mineralization.
2 Likes
Assuming a fresh membrane, RO water is indistinguishable from distilled water.
Last time I changed my membrane, I was getting TDS readings of 2
We really enjoy the taste of straight RO water. We only remineralize for making coffee.
I worked as a beer brewer for about a year. The brewery I worked at made many different styles of beer (probably too many) Here in SE Michigan the city water is actually really good and for most styles all we had to do was run it through a carbon filter to remove chlorine. We added extra minerals for Burton style IPA.
2 Likes
There is a good reason why beer styles were originally associated with different areas. Before water chemistry was understood, trial and error led to a few successes and a lot of failures. The water in those areas a capable of brewing a particular style much better than most other places. Think of a Czech pils, an Irish stout, or an English bitter. The reason those styles stuck in those places was mainly the water.
2 Likes
A ‘long’ time ago I learned a lot about brewing and have the stuff to do it on a small scale. It’s been a few years since I made a batch but it will happen again. I acquired a wort chiller I haven’t trialed yet!
I’m intrigued by the information on this thread as I recently tested a new brand with higher quality beans than the Starbucks breakfast blend we typically brew. I’m planning to sample a few more blends and figure out what area we prefer the beans from and will likely source our own on a larger scale as Clark has. I have a Nutri-bullet that should easily make enough grounds for a week + at a time.
As I understand it the Pittsburgh area has decent minerals for making beer. With the amount of microbreweries around I’d hope so. I think we can pull off German styles well, and it seems like many places focus on hazy IPAs.
1 Like
Golden Colorado has the best water i ever tasted. I would not have thought water makes such a difference though tasting it there at the coors plant i can confirm it does. We are fortunate to have good water here but we dont have a lot of it. I imagine the town of golden does not like losing all that water either.
1 Like
Anywhere that has water not too soft and not too hard is great for beer. A few styles like certain IPA’s from some areas of Britain require very hard water. It’s really easy to add minerals to water. It’s really hard (and expensive) to remove minerals from water.
Water for beer making is not nearly as specific as water for coffee brewing.
I’m no expert, however I did spend a year making beer at Dragonmead brewery near Detroit.
https://www.dragonmead.com/menus/dragonmead-beers
3 Likes