What's the Best Way to Filter Your Water?
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When it comes to cooking and making drinks, water is not just a utility. It’s an ingredient. And a highly valuable one at that. Especially when it comes to coffee, the quality of your water can have a huge impact on the overall flavor and quality of your beverage—not to mention the longevity of your coffee machine.
Sure, you might not be able to fill your coffee pot from the pristine spring burbling in your backyard, but there are other ways to be on top of your water quality. The simplest solution is to find out if your water should be filtered—and the best way to do so.
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What exactly needs to be filtered out?
Ranging from the standard filter pitcher you keep in your fridge to more intensive systems built into plumbing, there’s no one solution for everybody’s water. “It depends on what contaminants are actually in your water and what’s going to fit your budget or your family needs,” says the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) toxicologist Dr. Alexis Temkin, Ph.D. She thinks there is no reason to get the most serious water filter if you don’t actually need it. The EWG maintains an extensive tap water database where you can look up the pollutants reported for any US zip code, and from there you can research the right filter to address those specific contaminants.
Consider aromatic compounds vs. physical compounds
Specialty Coffee Association Chief Research Officer Peter Giuliano breaks down water filters by whether they work on aromatic compounds, like chlorine, or physical ones, like minerals. “It’s easiest to take out the aromatic, gassy stuff with your standard water pitcher's carbon filtration. "But, that doesn’t do anything for what we call total dissolved solids.” (Or what they in the biz abbreviate to TDS.) Dissolved solids include things like minerals, metals, and salt that make their way into water as it breaks down rocks or from various forms of contamination. Water with high TDS is a poor solvent and won’t properly extract coffee. Additionally, the minerals build up in your coffee brewer and keep it from working correctly.
Avoid softened or distilled water
Most Americans have hard water, which is to say water marked by a high mineral content from environmental factors. Hard water is harmless to drink but is a problem for coffee makers and other appliances—it leads to spots on glassware, poor foaming of soaps, and can contribute to dry skin and hair. Water softeners counteract hardness by passing water through resin beads (often mistaken for salt) charged with sodium or potassium ions. The hard calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced by sodium or potassium in a process called ion exchange.
Distillation, where water is converted into steam and then collected, is another way to separate out many, but not all, impurities. Distilled water is rarely recommended for cooking or drinking. For coffee, softened and distilled water actually has too few dissolved solids in it, which can lead to over-extracting coffee to produce a less than perfect cup.
The magic number of TDS for making coffee is 150 parts per million, where one part per million is equal to a thousandth of a gram (0.001g) in a liter of water. If you really want to brew like the pros, you can achieve it with filtering and remineralizing. Andy Sprenger, two-time US Brewer’s Cup champion and founder of Sweet Bloom coffee roasters in Lakewood, CO, uses a a reverse osmosis system with a mineral cartridge at home, but he also recommends Third Wave Water's mineral packets which are formulated to supply the perfect bit of seasoning to distilled or reverse osmosis water.
Although remineralization seems a little extreme, the secret to good coffee is the same as the secret to every super simple recipe, it all starts with the quality of the ingredients.
So, What's the Best Water Filter for You?
Here are some general guidelines on selecting a water filtering method—from simple to complex.
Standard Water Filter Pitcher
Most people will benefit in some way from carbon filtering tap water—especially if you'RE sensitive to the taste of chlorine. A classic Brita water filter pitcher will get rid of chlorine taste and smell, and other contaminants depending on the filter. The longlast filter removes the most contaminants.
BUY IT: Brita Large 10 Cup Water Filter Pitcher with Standard Filter, $27 on Amazon
Mineral Packets
On the other hand, if your water is free of contaminants but tastes flat due to softening or distillation, consider Third Wave Water mineral packets, which enhance the taste and TDS of water to make it perfect for brewing coffee.
BUY IT: Third Wave Water, $15 on Amazon
Reverse Osmosis
If you want to be like the pros and have great water straight from the kitchen tap, you’re going to need a plumber. Reverse osmosis systems install directly to your sink and force water through a semipermeable membrane that is too fine for solids to pass through.
"Reverse osmosis tends to be the gold standard of water filtration, but there are some drawbacks," says Dr. Temkin. "It's expensive and a pain to install—and it can waste a lot of water in the process.” But in areas where water has high levels of TDS, Giuliano advises using a reverse osmosis system. “In Southern California, for example, a lot of the water comes from the Colorado River, which is filled with sediment. For that reason there's a high TDS count that we have to get down significantly in order to make it usable for coffee. Most reverse osmosis systems also have a carbon unit filter in it so it takes out both the negative aromas and reduces the TDS.”
BUY IT: i Spring Reverse Osmosis system, $210 on Amazon
Originally Appeared on Epicurious
