Whale wrote:Furthermore, it is not only claimed that they discern, but that they can tell UNANIMOUSLY that +/- 25 mg/L of dissolved solids will make a coffee taste from good to "OFF". This is a completly unacceptable statement. It means nothing if not given with the exact definition of the other test parameters, and even with all the information it would also mean that everybody should like the same amount of acidity and body balance...

I want to continue, but I fear it is futile.

First, they never wrote what you wrote. They did not say that 25 mg/L took coffee "from good to off," but merely that the "acid and body balances were perceived to be off," leaving the 150 mg/L as the "superior" of the three. A coffee with acid and body balance slightly off could still be a wonderful coffee for many people.

As it happens, the few high-end shops and roasters with whom I have ever discussed water quality generally settled on something close to 150 TDS in their own tastings.

It should also be understood that the coffee trade has prospered for centuries with its own methods of quality control, which were developed to grade an agricultural product that constantly varies, not industrial widgets.

Finally, although no methodology or conclusions in any field are beyond criticism, I would have thought the teensiest bit of humility might be in order here, even on Home-barista.

Wow....such animosity in this topic....

Distilled water is available at most supermarkets. Calcium carbonate is available from beer brewing places; reagent grade calcium carbonate and sodium chloride are available from Aldrich-Sigma. With an inexpensive conductive meter and scale, one can make water with different TDS and conduct own blind taste test.

There were a few errors in the book. For example, the charges for several anions were wrong on page 32. After all, this is edition one.

Municipalities test water daily. The local EBMUD published the water to average about 50ppm. I just tested the water myself and it was 20ppm. No wonder coffee has been tasting flat recently.

Marshall wrote: Finally, although no methodology or conclusions in any field are beyond criticism, I would have thought the teensiest bit of humility might be in order here, even on Home-barista.

Marshall,

It has nothing to do with humility, but everything to do with credibility. How many well known, even famous people, within the coffee industry wrote stuff about the horrible impact of freezing on coffee, before Jim and I did our series of frozen coffee experiments using blind tasting methodology? Should we have been more humble?

I don't take anything at face value, no less when it revolves around matters such as taste. And when a book such as you have written about makes unbelievable assertions, giving the false aura of some sort of scientific study having been done, all the while when such a work is obviously produced with industry participants who want to sell a product related to what they are discussing -- that's just plain ridiculous. How can they possibly excuse the involvement of a company such as Cirqua in producing this tretise? Does the SCAA have any concept of the idea of "objectivity?" Or, are they just too beholden to the sponsors who write them big checks?

If the SCAA wants to be taken seriously regarding matters such as this, then they are going to have to take a much more honest approach, and make a conscious effort to exclude businesses wanting to sell related products from the writing of their "scientific" works.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:I don't take anything at face value, no less when it revolves around matters such as taste.

O.K. Here is a hypothesis you could easily test: that your dissatisfaction with every espresso blend known to man and insistence upon precisely 14g in every shot is related to your method of treating your water. Try brewing from a large bottle of good drinking water for a few weeks and see if that changes anything.

On a side note, 150TDS is a new magic number. The old CQI standard is in two parts: a carbonate hardness (alkalinity) of 50 mg/L, which translates to water that has an exactly neutral 7 equilibrium pH, and 90 mg/L calcium hardness, which is the saturation point at 90C, the brew temperature, i.e. the maximum amount of calcium, given neutral pH, that won't precipitate out at the temperature the coffee brews. Clearly, since these numbers optimize actual brewing parameters, they have a lot more going for them than 150 TDS.

So the book has it wrong -- a coffee made from the scientifically justified 140 TDS water would be vastly better than the arbitrarily determined 150 TDS brew

Marshall wrote:O.K. Here is a hypothesis you could easily test: that your dissatisfaction with every espresso blend known to man and insistence upon precisely 14g in every shot is related to your method of treating your water. Try brewing from a large bottle of good drinking water for a few weeks and see if that changes anything.

Judge Judy wrote:Counselor, your comments are unresponsive to the questions posed. I am ordering them struck from the record

another_jim wrote:On a side note, 150TDS is a new magic number. The old CQI standard is in two parts: a carbonate hardness (alkalinity) of 50 mg/L, which translates to water that has an exactly neutral 7 equilibrium pH, and 90 mg/L calcium hardness, which is the saturation point at 90C, the brew temperature, i.e. the maximum amount of calcium, given neutral pH, that won't precipitate out at the temperature the coffee brews. Clearly, since these numbers optimize actual brewing parameters, they have a lot more going for them than 150 TDS.

So the book has it wrong -- a coffee made from the scientifically justified 140 TDS water would be vastly better than the arbitrarily determined 150 TDS brew

This thread is starting to read like a movie review that is based only on reading another review of the same movie. As I mentioned in the beginning, the book is 51 pages, of which I have lifted only two paragraphs, which I thought was about as far as I could or should go for "fair use." Recommended numbers are given for "adequate" and "superior" brews for calcium hardness, total alkalinity, pH and other parameters.

It is also noted that a variation of 25 mg/L in TDS is normally undetectable in plain water. It is in the process of extracting the coffee solids that a 25 mg/L difference becomes apparent.

Marshall wrote: It is also noted that a variation of 25 mg/L in TDS is normally undetectable in plain water. It is in the process of extracting the coffee solids that a 25 mg/L difference becomes apparent.

Do you believe that, Marshall? Do you believe it would be apparent to you and your taste buds? I'll go out on a limb and say it would be unlikely to be apparent to mine in any sort of controlled testing.

ken

Marshall wrote:It is also noted that a variation of 25 mg/L in TDS is normally undetectable in plain water. It is in the process of extracting the coffee solids that a 25 mg/L difference becomes apparent.

Interesting point. Coffee is a strong flavor, so a difference that would be readily apparent in the plain water will be obscured in the presence of coffee. Therefore, they are claiming that a 25 mg/L will tasteably affect the way the coffee extracts, not the way the water tastes.

It sounds like they simply detected over or under extraction in the coffee and then attributed that to water quality. This is like comparing breads baked at two altitudes, but left in the oven the same time. Obviously the one baked at the the correct altitude/time combo will taste better than the one baked for the wrong amount of time.

Marshall, almost everything you are saying is making this publication sound worse, not better. Basically, they are saying that if the coffee making is set up for one level of water hardness, changing the hardness will change the extraction timing. Then, instead of doing the thing this claim strictly entails, that is, telling people how to adjust brewing parameters for different levels of hardness, they are simply telling everyone which water hardness is best.

If they need to adjust the extraction recipe to equalize brew TDS and solids extraction for different level of hardness; they need to do this before they can even begin to make claims about the best tasting water.

another_jim wrote:
Marshall, almost everything you are saying is making this publication sound worse, not better. Basically, they are saying that if the coffee making is set up for one level of water hardness, changing the hardness will change the extraction timing. Then, instead of doing the thing this claim strictly entails, that is, telling people how to adjust brewing parameters for different levels of hardness, they are simply telling everyone which water hardness is best.

Actually, what Marshall is saying and quoting makes the book sound like a piece of promotional literature for a company that is trying to sell you something. Just speaking off the cuff, I'm not really sure why that would be the case, but maybe, just perhaps, that could be attributable to a company called "Cirqua," who appears to have had some involvement in the production of said book.

Of course, wouldn't it be funny if the whole idea for the publication of this book came from Cirqua? Given that the SCAA has approximately zero interest in lecturing their members about what to do with their water supplies before making coffee with it, I'd say that this is more than just idle speculation. And if my "idle speculation" is correct, that really does not say a whole lot about the ethical standards of this organization.

ken