Lilla Kafferosteriet, a cafe and roastery in Malmö, hosts occasional cuppings on Sunday afternoons. I’m terrible at keeping up with the Swedish coffee scene (I don’t speak Swedish) and would never have known about these, but luckily Oscar from Portafilth.com keeps me in tune with where the coffee geek action is happening in Malmö.
Last time I went to a Lilla Kafferosteriet cupping, it was a series of coffees from different regions in Harrar, Ethiopia. The other weekend they were doing something even more interesting: cupping the same coffee brewed with four different kinds of water. If you drink your coffee with milk and sugar, this is the time to tune out and go watch Youtube or something. But if your interest is piqued, read on.
Måns, barista of what I gather is the ‘specialty’ focused slow bar at the back of Lilla Kafferosteriet, started off the cupping by explaining how water’s chemistry, acidity, and mineral levels affect the flavor of brewed coffee. This was in Swedish, so I didn’t understand a word of it. But I’ve read a bit in the past, and some information about water content and coffee brewing can be found at David Schomer’s blog or at Cirqua or Everpure’s websites (both major water filtration suppliers). The SCAA also has a 56 page ‘Water Quality Handbook,’ which you can buy for $35 from the SCAA, or you can read about it on Home-Barista.com.
In short, brewed coffee is mostly water, so it’s important to have water with chemistry that plays well with the soluble materials in the ground coffee. To taste the difference, we had before us the same coffee brewed with four different kinds of water: Pur Pur, a specially formulated bottled water for coffee brewing; Lilla Kafferosteriet’s own filtered and conditioned tap water; unfiltered Malmö tap water; and Evian bottled water.
Evian and unfiltered tap water both muted the flavor of the coffee, obscuring the acidity, and for lack of a better word the ‘sparkle’ of fleeting flavors and aromas that fresh roasted coffee should have.
The filtered and conditioned tap water was much better, tasting like what I’d expect a good brew to be with balanced and defined acidity, sweetness, and bitterness. The Pur Pur was marginally better tasting, bringing out a little more nuanced sweetness and acidity, but not with enough difference that you’d notice it if you weren’t looking for it.
All in all this just underscores what I’d mentioned while testing the Coava Disk at Solde, that you need to, at the very least, filter your tap water when brewing coffee at home. I’m not about to advocate buying bottled coffee-brewing water (like Pur Pur) all the time, it’d be excessive and wasteful I think. But it might be a nice exercise to try once, compared with what you’re usually tasting. It could be an eye opener.
(Look out for a proper article about Lilla Kafferosteriet, as well as the rest of the Malmö coffee scene in the future — been busy with my masters program, but I’m working on it!).
7 comments
Billy says:
May 2, 2011
Do you feel there’s such a thing as “stale” water–does un-bottled water that sits around for a while become less well-suited to brewing coffee? I use fresh well-aerated unfiltered tap, which I find brews better than my filtered water (even though it tastes worse when drunk plain), which usually has been sitting around for a while. Just curious about your experience
Aaron Frey says:
May 3, 2011
I haven’t really noticed that. The difference I see between filtered and tap water is that filtered water shows more ‘clarity,’ ‘definition,’ ‘range’ or however you want to describe it — the flavors that evoke the aromatic character of the coffee and the higher range of acidic and subtle flavors disappear with plain tap water, making a great coffee taste more like a stale, supermarket coffee.
That said, tap water is different everywhere, even season to season if I understand that correctly. Maybe you’re lucky and you’ve got good tap water where you are? :)
What kind of filter do you use?
Billy says:
May 3, 2011
Yes, maybe. I’m in Los Angeles right now; I really don’t like the taste of the tap water straight but hey, it’s brewing well for me right now (I think my house actually semi-filters the kitchen tap…). For drinking, I usually use a Pur-filtered pitcher. Next week I might mess around with some bottled waters for brewin’. Any California recommendations?
Aaron Frey says:
May 3, 2011
I grew up in LA but can’t say I ever brewed coffee with plain tap water, so I’m not sure. I always ran it through a Brita water filter — but it’s been several years since I’ve been back and I can’t really comment, and back then my brewing technique was a bigger problem than the water quality, hehe.
Johan Larsson says:
Jun 18, 2011
Hello there! We met at the different-waters-cupping at Lilla Kafferosteriet and I told you about a coffee bar I was opening. Well, we’ve opened up the doors now! Come and have a cup and tell what you think about the place! :)
Aaron Frey says:
Jun 19, 2011
Great! I’ll have to swing by and check it out soon
Toby’s Estate, Brooklyn – Public Cupping Sessions | FRSHGRND says:
Mar 20, 2012
[…] an eye-opener. If you’re lucky, you can also get in on cuppings of acids, defects, or even cuppings of different brewing water, all of which highlight how many variables affect the flavor of a […]