Water makes up more than 98% of a cup of filter coffee, yet it is often the last variable people look at. Its mineral content can bring out a coffee’s acidity or flatten it completely, add or remove body, and change how much of the coffee ends up in the cup. Water for Coffee explains why this happens, starting from the chemistry of the dissolved minerals and working towards practical decisions about the water you brew with.

What the book covers

The book looks at how the minerals dissolved in water behave, how they interact with coffee during extraction, and how that shows up in flavour, for brewing as well as roasting. From there it moves to the practical side: knowing what is in your water, and building water recipes so you can control and predict how a coffee will taste instead of relying on whatever comes out of the tap. The first edition had a reputation as a demanding read that opened with short primers on chemistry and physics before applying them to the café. The second edition takes the subject further.

What changed in the second edition

Ten years passed between the two editions, and in that time water went from a niche topic to one of the most discussed variables in specialty coffee, with mineral concentrates, low-TDS filtration and custom recipes now common at home as well as in cafés. The authors describe the new edition as going deeper into the chemistry of water and how it interacts with coffee, with more emphasis on building recipes. It is published as a hardcover, where the first edition was a paperback.

Putting it into practice

Most water recipes start from water with almost nothing dissolved in it, because you can only control the mineral content if you begin close to zero. Norwegian tap water is generally soft, but it still varies from one area to the next. A jug such as the ZeroWater 1.7 L takes tap water down to near-zero dissolved solids, which gives you a clean, known base for building the recipes in the book.

About the authors

Maxwell Dashwood (credited as Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood on the first edition) is a three-time UK Barista Champion and co-owner of Colonna, a roastery and coffee shop in Bath. He is also the author of The Business of Specialty Coffee and co-author of The Coffee Dictionary. Christopher H. Hendon is an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oregon, where he leads a computational materials chemistry research group, and he works with coffee professionals and researchers on fundamental questions in coffee science.

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