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Is your water any good for coffee?

Water is most of what is in your cup, and it is the most ignored variable in home coffee. The wrong water mutes good beans and quietly scales up an espresso machine. Tell it where your water comes from and it will tell you whether that is a problem and what to do about it.

Two things water affects. Taste — minerals pull flavour out of coffee, so water that is too pure tastes flat and water that is too hard tastes dull. And your machine — hard water leaves scale inside an espresso machine that shortens its life. A good water is a middle ground that serves both.

Making your own water from distilled or RO

If you start from distilled or reverse-osmosis water you have a blank slate, which is the most reliable route to good coffee water — you add back exactly the minerals you want and nothing scales your machine that you did not choose. Pick how much you are making and how hands-on you want to be.

How to find your hardness if you do not know it

Two easy ways. Cheap GH and KH test strips — the kind sold for aquariums — give you a number in a minute. Or look up your local water utility's annual water-quality report, which almost always lists hardness for your area. One catch worth knowing: a jug filter removes chlorine and softens water a little, but it does not fully soften it. If your tap water is hard, the filtered water is often still hard — so test the filtered water itself rather than assuming the jug solved it.