Find Full Flavor

Coffee requires certain minerals in the water to extract the correct flavors the way the roaster intended. The Specialty Coffee Association created a water standard to guide you on what should be in your coffee brewing water. We took that standard and used it as a template to create our Classic and Espresso Profiles to make sure you are getting the most out of your coffee.

Achieve Optimum Extraction

According to the SCA water standard, your water should be at around 150 total dissolved solids (TDS). TDS represents the amount of "stuff" in a liquid. This stuff can be organic matter, minerals, and even some chemicals (depending on where your water is coming from). If your water has more than 250 TDS it will not be able to extract enough because of the high mineral content. If it is below 50 TDS, you won’t get the correct balance of sweetness and body out of your coffee. Think of it like water is "carrying" ions and the less it's carrying the more it will stop and pick things up along the way. If its arms are full it will keep walking. We decided to create the Classic and Espresso Profiles to sit in-between these thresholds in order to get the most out of your coffee.

Reduce Bitterness

The taste of your coffee is reliant on the amount of buffer, or alkalinity, it has. Without enough buffer, your coffee can taste overly acidic and potentially bitter. If it has too much of this buffer, it can taste rather dull or flat, lacking many of the bright flavors that we have grown fond of in specialty coffee. 

Dark roast coffee has a tendency to be overly acidic and bitter tasting. For this reason, we created the Dark Roast Profile with significantly more buffer in the form of sodium bicarbonate, which increases the perceived sweetness, allowing the tasting notes of your coffee (caramel, baker's chocolate, nuts, etc.) to be more pronounced.

Balanced Water Chemistry

Third Wave Water is engineered to protect your equipment as well. Your kettle, coffee maker, and other machinery is just as important as the coffee brewed with it, so we decided to create mineral profiles that both improve you coffee's taste and protect your equipment. All of our mineral profiles are created with permanent hardness minerals to prevent scale and are designed to help you experience the tasting notes on your favorite bag of coffee.