which water.
makes the coffee.
Mineral content drives acidity, body and extraction. We tell you which supermarket water works best for the coffee maker in your vacation rental.
- Countries
- 5
- Waters
- 413
- Methods
- 4
- Sources
- SCA · Hoffmann
thtotal hardnesstarget zone 50–175 ppm
128 ppm
alkalkalinitytarget zone 40–75 ppm
52 ppm
ppm as caco₃ equivalent · example values for filter/pour-over · source: sca water standard
let's find your water.
four things. nothing more.
- 01
sca-grade scoring.
Total hardness 50 to 175 ppm. Alkalinity 40 to 75 ppm. Weighted per brewing method.
- 02
413 waters. eu-wide.
Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, France. Including discounter house brands.
- 03
snap the label.
Brand not listed? Photo the label. Vision LLM extracts mineral values. Scored in seconds.
- 04
per brewing method.
Filter, espresso, AeroPress, cold brew. Each gets its own target profile.
coffee is 99 percent water. that one percent gets all your attention. we take care of the rest.
- 01
the underrated variable.
Beans, grinder, machine: everything gets discussed. The 99 percent from the bottle doesn't.
- 02
the science exists.
SCA Standard 310. Hendon and Colonna-Dashwood. Hoffmann. It has all been researched. It just never stood next to the water shelf.
- 03
no lab required.
Total hardness and alkalinity are printed on every label. They just need translating into a recommendation.
- 04
one input, one answer.
Country. Brewing method. Result. That's all we ask.
how it started.
Italy, holiday apartment. French press: not good. Moccamaster: not good enough. Even the espresso machine, packed along on purpose, didn't deliver like at home. It wasn't the beans, it wasn't the machine. That left the water.
Then the supermarket: a shelf full of bottles, all with mineral values on the label, and no idea which one works for espresso. Google didn't help, neither did ChatGPT. Yet the answer had existed for years: the SCA standard defines target ranges for hardness and alkalinity, Hendon and Colonna-Dashwood wrote down the chemistry, Hoffmann explained it. Just never at the shelf.
All I wanted back then was a simple, fast answer. It didn't exist. So we built it: 413 waters, four brewing methods, one input. So the answer is where the question happens: in front of the shelf.
what about tap water?
If yours lands in the target zone: use it. At home you can look it up once in your waterworks report. On vacation you have no data. The bottle has it printed on the label. And your espresso machine prefers soft water anyway.