Water & Roast. These two aaaaaalways go together, don’t they? In Colombia they cup, and they cup a lot. They cup in the day and they cup in the night (the most late cupping we did was at 9pm!) And it makes sense. They produce so many different and unique coffees. Across all cupping tables, they all had two things in common. The roast was much darker than what we were used to and they cupped with a ratio of 60g/L compared to the traditional 55g/L that we use mainly in Europe. That made me wonder why they do that. And the answer was ..... the water!. Both in my hometown and in London, I've always dealt with issues of hard water that needs softening. But in the areas that we went to in Colombia, the situation was the opposite. Their water was unbelievably soft (lowest was 27ppm (0.7 conv factor), hardest water was at 80ppm). Another interesting one was that most of the labs we cupped at, they all had the same filtration system (even the same brand)!. But this filtration system ensures that the filtered water is potable, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the water is great for coffee brewing. And it wasn’t. (simple test: water before the filter and after the filter was at the same tds). So what did we do? We built our own water. We had a Zero water jug with us that thankfully we didn’t need to use, because we mineralised their already soft water. This way, the people there can replicate this water and see how their coffees transform with ‘better’’ brewing water. We roasted the coffee a bit lighter using our @cataexport ‘s Ikawa, cupped at 55g/L and weighed how much ground coffee and water we pour into the cup. And then the coffee shone! And we say that because we did comparative tasting, cupping two cups.the softer/darker/’60g/L’ cup and the harder water/lighter/55g/L cup, and some of the coffees even got 2 more points on the CQI according to our q grader @doyouevenbrew. Before we left, we made sure that we left them some minerals and recipes for our water so both the producers and ourselves in London can cup the same way. #OriginTrip #Colombia #WatchHouse #Cataexport #Coffee_picking #Coffee_processing #SpecialtyCoffee #Barista #Competition #BaristaCompetition