A barista told me to stop using bottled water for my pour overs

I spent the last 6 months dialing in a V60 at home and kept getting a flat, dull cup. A barista at a shop in Portland watched me brew once and asked what water I used. I told her bottled spring water, and she said that was the problem. She pointed out the mineral balance was off for extraction, so I switched to a simple filtered tap with a pinch of baking soda and epsom salt. It was a night and day difference, the sweetness finally came through. Has anyone else had a water recipe that fixed their brews, or am I overthinking this?

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maxp6811d ago

Same thing happened to me last year. I was using that fancy mountain spring water in a glass bottle, thought I was doing it right. Swapped to the Third Wave Water packets with distilled water and it was like someone turned the lights on in my cup, all that muted fruit flavor just popped. The mineral thing makes total sense once you see it, too much calcium or magnesium and you get that chalky dryness, too little and everything tastes flat. I messed around with the baking soda and epsom salt mix too, even went down a rabbit hole with a TDS meter from Amazon just to check my numbers. It's a rabbit hole for sure but once you find a recipe your beans actually like, you can't go back to plain tap or bottled.