Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

Putting basic chemicals into an acidic solution to make it less acidic is trivially obvious. The interesting question here is what this does to the taste of coffee, which can be heavily influenced by the water. I would have suspected that this would affect taste significantly, and probably not in a good way.

They have a taste test in the end and claim that some of the versions taste better than their plain water. Not sure how much I'd believe this, especially as they don't specify their "plain coffee" and what the properties of the water were. In general softer water tends to be better for coffee taste than hard water.

View on HN

That basically has already been well researched:

https://awasteof.coffee/how-to/mixing-water/

https://coffeeadastra.com/category/water-for-coffee/

https://www.scottrao.com/blog/lotus-water-drops

And is a functional requirement of a bunch Specialty Coffee Association stuff.

I've experimented a bit with adding some bicarbonate to very acidic espressos. It mutes the flavor a little bit but completely kills the harshness that made it unpleasant. It is not a fix for under-extraction though, it fixes beans that are just not good for espresso.

A tiny bit of salt works wonders for very bitter espressos from overly roasted beans.

But on the end buying beans I like is easier and makes even better coffee than those hacks.

There can be a substantial difference in the flavor of coffee based on the composition of the water used to brew it.

Softer water doesn't necessarily mean better or worse tasting coffee. Just different tasting coffee. Hardness of the water impacts extraction yield from the coffee. Alkalinity will have a huge impact on the acidity, or "sour" notes in the coffee and you can adjust this to taste.

Or cold brew it. Reduces acidity by 70%. Brewing takes longer, but IMO it's worth it.

Careful, this will increase the power of your coffee by ~2.5x. So you will either need to water it down or drink less of it.

Cold brew is surprisingly easy to make. All you need is a French press. I think you are technically supposed to do it with a coarser bean grind, but it’s possible to just leave ground coffee with a certain ratio to water on the counter in the French press overnight and you are done. Press the coffee and the morning and it’s ready. Afterwards you probably want to decant it if you don’t drink it all though

I use Grady's pitcher packs, and I use half the recommended number of packs per pitcher, so it's less concentrated than normal. I also found they do decaf pitcher packs, so that I can avoid all that caffeine.

I also mix this about 50/50 with milk alternative, currently that would be Ripple brand.

Personally, I would never do cold brew in a French press. Any container will do, so long as you use the appropriate amount of coffee, and it is appropriately filtered (they make special filters for this). But I don't like using glass containers for this stuff -- to easy to drop and make a right royal mess of broken glass and coffee grounds and such splattered all over the place. So, I use non-breakable containers instead.

I hadn’t heard of Grady’s. Good rec. I also like that they do decaf as I’ve also been cutting out caffeine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com