Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood & Christopher Hendon have written a book about water, "Water For Coffee" which is now available for pre-order at {waterforcoffeebook.***Mod note: This link goes to a malware site - July 2023} for £26.99. With international shipping to the USA and with the current currency conversion performed by PayPal, this worked out to be $56.32 USD for me this morning.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this book. I did buy the SCAA Water Quality Handbook but have gotten bogged down it the chemistry and haven't finished it yet.

Here's some links to Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood on water in Home-Barista from previous articles and videos to whet your appetite.

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood on Water

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood's water article in Barista

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood on the complexities of water and flavor [video]

As much as I'd love to read this book, I have the same problem. I very well might end up paying, though.

If it makes the next 4 bags of coffee a person buys taste better, the ROI will be worth it.

Playing devil's advocate though, I wonder if its a $56 lesson to be told to use higher magnesium, lower bicarbonate brewing water? Personally, I don't suspect a sophomore effort from him, I imagine it will be quite useful.

Hi guys,
Thank you for the interest in our work.

It has taken quite a long time to get this book to print (nearly 2 years). The book has had input from many designers, so it looks good. It has been peer-reviewed by other scientists, so it is pretty serious. It has also been proofed by many non-scientists, so it reads well.

I sincerely hope you enjoy it, but also learn a lot from it. I am more proud of this than I am of my own PhD thesis.
With regards to the formats it is available in, we elected, in the end, to go for a printed version only. There are many reasons for this but the most pertinent being that:

i) the book looks and reads much better as a real life book.
ii) the people who read this book will value it as an educational object.
iii) I did not want any digital imagery of our 'money shot figures' available for download because we don't have a legal team strong enough to chase things down.

I realise that it is quite expensive for a book that on face value is about coffee and water. I hope that upon reading it, you will realise that this is way more than that. I would like to think that we've written it with an assumed base knowledge of nothing, and by the end you should be at least as capable as a 1st year university student. It is for the enthusiast, the barista, the roaster and the curious.

From Maxwell and I, thank you again for the interest in our work. I am excited to be able to teach chemistry to such a broad audience.

I'm sure the topics will be discussed on the forum so I'm not so sure of your reason number 3. Unless, you plan to go the route, or use methods, of another refractometer manufacturer around here. However, I can appreciate wanting to preserve aesthetics and will probably end up buying the hardcopy if it's sold in the US.

Looks like the book goes to print on Monday, according to this tweet.

Well, we will see what he has to say in detail sometime in September if all goes well. From the info on the site it sounds like a detailed discussion of how to control and/or modify the taste of coffee by manipulating the brew water chemistry. It will be interesting.