Our brewing water recipe

Coffee is mostly made of water. This probably won't surprise you at first, until you realize that water makes up 98% of an average cup of coffee. Only 2% of a cup of coffee consists of actual coffee elements. Despite such a dominant percentage in a cup of coffee, we often underestimate the effect of water components on coffee.

When I first started brewing coffee at home, I was almost always dissatisfied with the results I got. Even though I was using a perfect coffee brewing equipment I bought from a shop and coffee beans I knew were good, when I came home and brewed my own coffee, I ended up with a tasteless, simple, and boring coffee. I provided almost the exact same brewing conditions as in my favorite coffee shop; I adjusted the grind size, used the same brewing equipment, and even tried different kettles, but all these attempts always failed. The taste of my coffee was still very ordinary, and I was almost ready to give up brewing coffee at home. There was a solution, but as someone not good with science, this solution initially seemed quite complex and boring to me: the composition of the minerals in the water I used to brew coffee. Specialty coffee shops spend thousands of dollars on water treatment systems that can control the mineral structure of the water they use for brewing coffee, so that it has a mineral balance that brings out the aromas in coffee in the best possible way. As someone brewing coffee at home, I couldn't afford a similar system, so I started looking for a solution to overcome this problem with my own means to be able to drink a delicious cup of coffee every morning.

While I was trying to solve this problem, people more advanced in coffee than me developed products like Third Wave Water for home brewers as a result of their research. However, acquiring one of these products would have been too expensive for me while living in an overseas country, so this was not possible. Thus, I developed my own recipe for this during my time in the Philippines. My goal in these 3 years of work was to develop a water recipe that could bring out the complex acidic and sweet aromas in coffee beans using easily accessible ingredients.

I hadn't mentioned my recipe to anyone until now, but I decided to share my recipe to contribute to the home brewing community, which I am also a part of. I initially started with the basic principles shared by Matt Perger on his personal blog Barista Hustle. Matt helped people in the coffee world create water with an ideal mineral balance for brewing coffee using easily accessible ingredients in supermarkets, such as Epsom salt, baking soda, and purified water. While it is possible to make delicious coffee using this recipe, I felt that brews made with this recipe were lacking in sweetness and body. So, I identified the other missing components in the recipe: gypsum powder - also known as food-grade calcium sulfate.

Mineral Solution Recipes

Since only small amounts of each mineral are used, the easiest and most accurate way to create this recipe is to first create three separate solutions in three one-liter bottles of purified water, and then use these solutions in different ratios to create the most suitable water for coffee.

1. Solution: Buffer
1 liter distilled water
1.4g sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)
2. Solution: Magnesium Sulfate
1 liter distilled water 10.15g Epsom salt
3. Solution: Calcium Sulfate

1 liter distilled water 9.5g gypsum powder (food grade) For each solution, mix the distilled water and mineral and then shake the bottle vigorously. The resulting buffer solution and magnesium sulfate solutions will be completely transparent, but the calcium sulfate solution will be quite cloudy due to some undissolved solids. Once you have prepared your solutions, you can now use them to create a mineral water with an ideal balance. I created this recipe based on 1-gallon (3.78 liter) bottles of distilled water, which I could easily find in supermarkets.

Water Recipe for Coffee

3.5 liters distilled water
140 ml buffer solution
70 ml magnesium sulfate solution
35 ml calcium sulfate solution.

1. If you are using a one-gallon bottle for this recipe (3.78 liters), remove 280 ml of distilled water from the bottle, leaving 3.5 liters of distilled water in the bottle. This will make room in the bottle to add the mineral solutions.
2. Shake each solution bottle well to ensure that all settled minerals are evenly distributed within the solution.
3. Using a sensitive scale, weigh out the amounts of each solution as specified in the recipe above and set them aside.
4. Add all of these weighed solutions to the distilled water bottle.
5. Close the bottle cap and shake vigorously to ensure that the mineral solutions are thoroughly mixed with the distilled water.
6. Enjoy making coffee with your homemade coffee brewing water. Using this recipe, I was able to consistently brew delicious coffee with my V60; my coffees were balanced and flavorful. You can adjust the ratios in this basic recipe according to your preferred coffee, brewing method, and even environmental variables such as the altitude at which you brew.

Have you tried a coffee brewing water recipe for yourself? Do you have any other tips or tricks you've found for brewing a delicious cup of coffee?

Photo by Jana Sabeth on Unsplash