For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about water’s impact on coffee flavour?

In this episode, I tell the story of how the specialty coffee community came to understand water chemistry: the pioneering work of the computational chemist Christopher Hendon and British roaster Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, the genesis of the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook, and where we are today understanding the impact of minerals on our water.

I strongly recommend listening to the two episodes before this one first: Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step & The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them

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Want to go deeper into water chemistry?

Read the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook

Season 3 of The Science of Coffee is made possible by these leading coffee organisations:

The Coffee Quest | BWT | TODDY | Algrano | Probat

Note: this is a reworked version of my 2022 episode Water for Brewing Coffee, including portions of my 2024 episode How to think like a scientist, part 2.