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

From Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries by James Harper

July 28, 2025 · 26 min · Season 6 · Episode 12

About this episode

This episode explores the evolving understanding of water's role in coffee flavor within the specialty coffee community.

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 SpotifyFollow me on Instagram and tag me in an Instagram storyWrite 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 HandbookBWT White Paper on the effects of magnesium (German)Christopher Hendon’s Instagram where he’ll announce his new version of his book…

People in this episode

Host: James Harper

Topics covered

water chemistry
coffee flavor
specialty coffee
espresso
SCA Water Quality Handbook

Keywords

water impact
coffee flavor
espresso machines
water quality
minerals in water

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: SCA