The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them

550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise!

But then Earth changed—violently. The planet shifted from a peaceful, plant-eating paradise to a darker, more brutal world. And in this new world, the chemistry of water was forever altered.

This is the wild story of how earth-shaking forces and the spirits of long-dead critters ruin your coffees today.

This story will help you remember the two invisible ingredients in your water that have a huge impact on coffee flavour and your brewing equipment: calcium and hydrogen carbonate.

Read Marcia Bjonerud’s amazing book, Reading the Rocks

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Season 3 of The Science of Coffee is made possible by these leading coffee organisations:

The Coffee Quest | BWT | TODDY | Algrano | Probat

Note: this is a reworked version of my 2022 episode Water for Brewing Coffee.