The water
Choosing a good quality drinking water is the key to making great coffee. Coffee is over 98% water, so choosing your water is very important. Unless you live in the mountains and have natural spring water flowing out of your faucet, you should never use unfiltered tap water to brew your coffee. If you take one piece of advice from this web site, make it this: Use a good quality drinking water that tastes good.
If your water tastes good, then chances are your coffee will taste good too. With that in mind, you should try and buy a water that has a high alkaline percentage. Here's why:
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Coffee is very acidic, some people can't even drink it. Using an alkaline water (also called ionized water) will help balance out the pH level in your coffee, making it less acidic and thus more enjoyable to drink. This sounds complicated, but it doesn't have to be. I'm not suggesting you go out and buy products to make your water more alkaline (although there are several products on the internet to choose from), but rather buy a bottled water that is naturally more alkaline than acidic. And what type of water should you buy? |
Natural spring water, and particularly mineral water, tends to be more alkaline than purified water. So my recommendation is to use a natural spring or mineral water to brew your coffee. But regardless of what type of water you choose, just make sure it tastes good. You can drive yourself crazy looking at pH balances, but in reality, you probably can't taste much of a difference. So just choose a drinking water that tastes good.
Note, however, that you should never use distilled water.
And you should always use cold water to brew your coffee, so store your water in the refrigerator. If you're using filtered tap water, then fill up a pitcher and refrigerate it.
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