How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour

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 Please spread the word about The Science of Coffee! Leave a 5 star rating on Spotify Follow me on Instagram and tag me in an Instagram story Write a review on Apple Podcasts Discover how I make these Filter Stories episodes by subscribing to my Substack newsletter Want to go deeper into water chemistry? Read the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook BWT White Paper on the effects of magnesium (German) Christopher Hendon’s Instagram where he’ll announce his new version of his book, Water for Coffee Do an online Certificate of Advanced Studies at the Coffee Excellence Centre 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. Check out Standart , the award-winning coffee magazine. Get a free magazine and a free bag of coffee by clicking here . How does Perfect Moose detect what kind of milk is in the pitcher? Click here to find out. Pull a shot on the gorgeous Slayer Steam Single . What does the Marco MilkPal look like to you? WALL-E? Something Steve Jobs would be proud of? Check it out here .

You can listen to How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour is an episode from Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries by James Harper.

This episode is 25:39 long.

This episode was published on Jul 28, 2025.

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