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Watch out for that guy at the coffee expo who says 'just use hot tap water' for pour-overs
Met a guy at the Portland Coffee Expo last spring, claimed boiling tap water was fine for light roasts. Tried it at home with a $35 Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, tasted like a swimming pool. Checked my tap water TDS - 180 ppm. Total disaster. Now I filter everything down to 40 ppm with a $20 jug from Walmart. Anyone else get bad advice from those expo know-it-alls?
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jade_hunt4823d ago
Read a similar story on a coffee forum where someone swore by tap water for years until they actually tested it and found out their local water was super hard. Dude said it made everything taste flat and bitter, even after he switched to fancy filters. Your TDS jump from 40 to 180 is wild, explains why that Yirgacheffe turned into a pool party lol. Those expo guys act like experts but half of them are just repeating old barista myths they heard five years ago.
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harris.aaron23d ago
Not quite true about the TDS jump though - going from 40 to 180 is actually pretty normal for a lot of areas, and some really good coffee can taste amazing at that level if the mineral balance is right. The real issue is usually the ratio of calcium to magnesium, or if there's too much sodium or chloride in the tap water, not just the total solids. Idk, the "low TDS is always better" thing gets repeated way too much at those events.
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