Being the owner of a coffee shop is a lot of responsibility. You are continuously making fresh coffee, pastries, finger sandwiches, cheesecake, espressos, and cappuccinos. The traditional coffee shop menu continues to grow, with new items being added monthly. While the extra offerings are great for your customers, they are additional work for you and your employees. Keeping your customers coming back will require dedication, hard work, and good service. If you begin to notice a drop in your coffee and cappuccino sales, it could be contributed to hard water minerals.  Learn more about how poor water quality can impact the taste of coffee and espressos by reading the content provided in the article below.

Overwhelming Bitter Flavor

The impurities in hard water can leave your coffee and cappuccino with an overwhelmingly bitter taste. No one wants to drive coffee that tastes like acid. Depending on your favorite coffee, you may enjoy a balance of acidity and sweetness, but not acidity and bitterness. Most people enjoy coffee right out of the pot, with no cream, sugar, or additional flavors.

Yes, coffee does have a bit of bitterness. But bitterness should not dominate the cup. Keeping this in mind, the dominating bitterness is most likely linked to the impurities in your tap water.

Filmy Coffee

If your customers begin to notice a film rising to the top of their coffee cups, they may or may not bring it to your attention. However, the oversight on your part could result in a loss of sales. This is why it is crucial to visually assess every pot of coffee before it is served to your customers. Your main goal is to catch filmy coffee before it makes it to the customers.

Once you start to notice a film building on the top of your coffee, you can guarantee the problem is hard water minerals – calcium and magnesium. What is the solution for hard water? A commercial water softener is the only option.

Poor Consistency

Another downside of hard water impurities is poor consistency. Coffee can be impacted by hard water minerals in more ways than one. When you make a cup of Joe, you expect the coffee grounds to mix up evenly and thoroughly. Unfortunately, this may not be the case when your water contains impurities.

You can make as many cups as you like, none of them will turn out with consistency. Installing a new water filtration system in your coffee house is the only solution for poor constancy coffee. The filtration system will trap the hard water minerals, keeping them out of your coffee and other beverages.

Summary

Did you know hard water minerals also negatively impact homemade baked products? They can impact the pastry dough by causing it to absorb too much water. When this happens, the hard water minerals will interfere with the yeast fermentation process. Initially, you may not even notice the effect hard water minerals are having on your pastry dough. However, once your pastries are fully baked, they will be tough and dry.