(chillhop music)
- I think a fun one today.
A nice little comparison review
because there's been more of these kinda products
popping up.
And I just wanna know myself,
how they compare, how they differ.
Now, if you're not familiar with what you're seeing,
here's the deal,
these four products are from four different companies
and they're aiming to solve the problem
of which water should I brew my coffee with?
Because we know, the water you brew with has a big impact
and often fixing that can be difficult, frustrating.
The idea here is that they sell the perfect ratio
of minerals that you then add to distilled pure water
and then you've got the end of it, perfect water for coffee.
And I know I say perfect 'cause there's no such thing
but I also say perfect 'cause everyone here
kind of seems to be talking about perfect to some extent.
Let's get into what we've got on the table.
Now, the first up is a Third Wave Water.
I would say probably the pioneers in this space,
correct me if I'm wrong.
Now, as disclosure, Third Wave Water
have supported the world's largest coffee tasting twice
with free product that we've then passed on.
It's meant that anyone taking part
in a tasting around the world
can be using exactly the same water
and therefore having as close to the same experience
as possible.
Now, this is their classic profile,
and this is I think shipped just for Europe
because the sizing is different.
These are little sachets, and this goes into two liters.
It's a metric dosage, for which I'm very grateful
'cause in the UK and in Europe,
we don't have access to gallons of water.
Literally we can't buy a gallon of water
in a shop very easily, if at all.
It's all metric.
So you buy like five liters or one liter, but not a gallon.
So this is for two liters, which I do quite like.
Now, Third Wave Water do other profiles too.
They do espresso profile, and a dark roast profile.
This is the classic
and so that's what we're gonna be testing today.
Next up is a different approach.
This is GC Water.
This is their perfect cup formula.
Wait, did ThirdWave say perfect anywhere?
No use of the word perfect.
We'll decide if that's a bonus or not later.
Now this is a different approach, which is interesting.
This is not a powder like the Third Wave Water.
This is two little droppers of liquid.
So the idea here is you put one milliliter of each one
and the metric usage is noted there,
of A and B into a gallon of water,
and then you've got a perfect combination of minerals.
I will say from a usability perspective,
the little droppers on here have been a bit annoying.
This was quite easy to just tear up and pour the sachet in.
Here, you can see on here, there's little markings
for sort of how much liquid you should be sort of using,
and you can see there's a one milliliter line there.
The frustrating thing is you can't squeeze
enough air out of the dropper.
If I squeeze everything out, really to get more than 0.75.
So that's just
not a very well chosen dropper from my perspective.
I did a 0.75 and then a 0.25, which was just awkward.
Just let me get a milliliter.
And then here, we've got coffee, brewing water
from Aquacode, no use of the word perfect,
which is good as far as I can tell.
So these work in metric, which I do appreciate,
but they're for seven liters, right?
It's a six mil sachet for seven liters of water.
And I don't know why it's seven liters.
That's such an odd size.
I can buy five, I can buy one, but why seven?
So mixing this was a little bit difficult.
In the end I weighed the contents of a sachet
and then very carefully took half of it out
and put into three and a half liters of water
just 'cause that's much more practical to me
than trying to do seven
when I don't have a seven liter container
and I've never seen a seven liter container.
Anyway, and then on the end here, perfect coffee water.
Now there's a lot of innovation around the names here.
We've got coffee brewing water,
we've got perfect coffee water, we've got perfect cup water,
and then Third Wave Water.
So points, I suppose to ThirdWave
for standing out at that front.
These are sachets again,
and each sachet here does one gallon of water, frustratingly
but I can work with a gallon.
They do a version that does five gallons,
if you've got one of those giant sort of things.
I guess you can buy five gallon tanks
in the US maybe I guess?
But a one gallon is what we used here.
So that was kinda nice.
These are your options, but how are they different?
Because none of them really give up
their secret sauce, right?
None of them will tell you what their composition is
perhaps because making your own water is quite easy.
If you're willing to source deionized water
and do all of that,
then actually to do a home brewed version
is relatively easy.
But if you don't wanna do that,
these are the options that are out there.
So instead of doing testing or that kinda stuff,
what I thought would be more interesting
is to do a taste comparison.
So here's how it's gonna work.
I've got three different roasts here.
I've got a light roast, a medium roast and a dark roast.
What we did here is we used a zero water filter, right?
Which actually strips everything out of your water
back to pretty much zero.
I just find that easier
than going and buying a ton of deionized water
and cheaper too.
So brand new filter in there stripped back to zero
and all of these were then made up.
These have since been randomized or turned blind for me.
So they've got into like an ABCD situation,
so I don't know which of the waters is which now.
What'll happen is that for each of the roasts,
we're gonna brew with each of the waters.
So there's gonna be three groups of tasting,
a light, and medium, and a dark,
and then randomized within those
will be all of these waters,
and we'll see how each of them performs
at different roast levels.
Now we're gonna be using the cupping method
a straight infusion brew.
I figured that's the easiest way
to remove as many variables as possible
and just taste the water coffee interaction.
So as you can see, we're kinda brewing in batches here.
So when it is time for tasting
C and D will be marginally hotter,
there's about four minutes gap between their brewing times
which as they cool down, won't really matter that much.
But I don't know which is C, which is D,
I don't know which is A which is B
in those kinda group tasting.
So, I will be as blind as blind can be
and what I'm looking for,
are kind of trends across the different roast levels, right?
If the same water performs in a very similar way,
it affects acidity in a very similar way,
or affects sort of bitterness in a very similar way,
that's sort of notable.
And what I hope to do, with this tasting
is give you advice about,
with the preference that you have for roast
or coffee flavor, which water might be the water for you
if you're looking for one of these as a solution
to coffee brewing water at home.
Time, I think pretty much to break and clean these ones,
and then we'll do a little redistribution
and make life as difficult as possible for me,
So I don't know what's going on.
So I'm just gonna taste my way through this.
I'm going to start with a light roast grouping first,
a medium, dark.
There'll be a slurp, but let's not just have a lot of slurps
that might get a little bit too much.
So, here's your first one.
On we go.
First impressions tasting this group,
what's defining the differences is acidity.
That's kind of interesting.
The differences don't feel quite as profound
in the medium roast group,
so I'm kind of interested to see
how the dark roast group will be.
I can't tell the difference between these ones.
It's really hard down this end to pick them apart.
I think it's time for some results.
I will talk through my preferences.
I'm not gonna say these ones are best,
it'll be interesting to see how different ones perform
at different stages.
So I've pushed forward
the furthest the one I liked the most,
so in this case, this was the one I liked the best,
then this one, and then these two.
Sort of an equal third place.
And same again here, I like this one best then this one
and these two equal third place.
It's interesting that the pattern matches,
so it's highly unlikely
that this is the same winner across both.
On the dark roast,
it was really, really hard to pick them apart.
And this one was slightly less bitter, very slightly sweeter
but really astonishing to me actually
how similar they were in the cup.
All potentially have broken my palate walls at this point.
Another option, and it's really hard,
I think in the tasting to jump between roasts
because a big part of your tasting experience is contrast.
So when you go from say, a medium roast to a dark,
that first dark taste that you get
it seems darker than it is, right?
It seems more intensely bitter,
much harsher compared to this,
but as you compare to more similar bowls,
the tasting gets closer in a funny way.
Let me just lock in my preference.
This bowl here, it just had a bit more balance
of acid and sweet
and then it became increasingly sort of acid dominant.
So here, a little zingier, zippier
they both have really nice fruit from the coffee present.
Then these two, again, just a bit zippier still
just a good amount of zing if you like fresh,
crisp acidity in your coffees
then I think it would really like this.
I like more of a sweet acid balance,
and so this one stood out for me
as being just very enjoyable.
Similarly, here, it's a little jump up in acid
from this to this.
This is again, a bit more sweeter,
a bit more balanced for this roast level.
And then these two, this one's a little flatter generally.
And this one is kind of just a bit tangier,
I'm not saying I would prefer one over the other.
They are quite different there, which is interesting.
And then this one was just not quite as bad as the others.
Now, before we do the reveal,
there's a little something first
which is a short ad for this video's sponsor.
And because there's a sponsor for this video
it means we're gonna give away some coffee.
So if you can't afford coffee right now
and that would make your day,
there's a link down below.
If I can send you coffee, wherever you are in the world,
I will if you win.
25 of you I'll pick at random and send you coffee.
And that's possible because this video has a sponsor.
It's sponsored by Squarespace.
From websites, to online stores, to marketing tools.
Squarespace is an all in one platform
to help you build a beautiful presence online
for you or your business.
I've used Squarespace for years now
because it makes it just so easy to have an idea
and to build it and you can do it right now.
Sign up for a free trial down below
and then start by picking a template.
It depends what you wanna build a website for.
It might be your business, it might be your portfolio
and the templates are divided by kind of usage
and pick it and then start to play.
Fill it with your words, your images, adjust it, tweak it
and you'll have a stunning website in no time.
And when you're ready to take it live
use code James Hoffman for 10% off, any website or domain.
Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video.
Time for the reveal
and it's gonna be like a weird double reveal
because I don't know what the letters are yet.
So we'll kind of see if any one letter does better
and then we'll find out what that letter is.
So, from the light roast,
letter C did the best for me,
followed by letter B.
Now in this one, it's a win for B.
so B is doing quite well a first and a second.
And this one, oh, this one's A, interesting.
This was C, now that's interesting.
Now this felt a little flat in a medium roast
but it felt a bit more balanced in a light roast.
I really can't wait to see what these are.
And this one that fell a bit tangier was D.
Now on this side,
D takes a win!
This is really interesting.
Okay, it's kinda good news actually.
So D for me stood out
as being a bit more interesting, balanced, less bitter.
So now I guess we should find out what's what.
Now I gather, that they are written
on the bottom of the packets, so let's find out.
Perfect coffee water, first one I picked up was B.
Now I think B had the win over here, right?
So yes.
So I would say this tasted really good
with kind of a medium roast, very nice.
C, takes a win over here.
C, so C, this did really well
on this sort of light roast end of things.
Third Wave Water were A.
You, no, you came second over here.
So again, very nice in the sort of medium roast category
which means that this is D.
It is D, which is interesting
that it did well in that sort of darker roast section.
Definitely an interesting selection.
This for me would be a contender, you know what I mean?
Like I liked that it did quite well
at light and kind of more medium style roasts
though I have to say I did like this.
That was a really interesting test.
I always feel when we talk about water
that we're just kind of dipping a toe
into this enormous subject, but definitely interesting.
Definitely interesting.
And if you use one of these,
I want to hear from you in the comments below,
why did you pick it?
How has your experience been, have you enjoyed using it?
Is it a pain, is it an easy part of your routine?
Have you tried a few different options?
What do you like?
Has it fit your coffee the way that I have described here?
Let me know down in the comments below,
but for now I'll say thank you so much for watching
and hope you have a great day.