Heavy metals are those elements that have a density at least 5 times greater than that of water. While some, such as Chromium, Selenium and Iron are required by the human body in trace amounts, others, such as Arsenic and Lead are extremely dangerous, and even a minimal level of exposure to them is unsafe.

In order to decide the best way to remove heavy metals from your water, it is important to know the different types of heavy metals commonly found in our water supplies, how to detect them, and what the safe consumption guidelines are. The last point about knowing water safety standards, according to me is the most crucial.

However, before I go forward, here’s a brief table of contents, in case you’re interested in skipping to a particular section.

• Commonly Found Heavy Metals To Watch Out For
• How do heavy metals get into water?
• Health effects of Heavy Metals in Water
• Existing Regulations on Heavy Metals
• How To Test For Heavy Metals At Home
• My Recommendation For Testing Heavy Metals At Home
• How To Remove Heavy Metals From Drinking Water
• Conclusion

Commonly Found Heavy Metals To Watch Out For:

Few of the dangerous heavy metals that have no biological use for humans are:

• Cadmium
• Arsenic
• Lead
• Antimony
• Mercury
• Lithium
• Beryllium
• Silver

Even heavy metals that are needed such as Chromium, Iron, Zinc, etc can cause adverse effects if their levels in the human body become excessive.

How do heavy metals get into water?

1. 1. Vehicular pollution– According to Nato Science For Peace and Security book , heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury are released into the air by vehicular emissions. These add to the pollutants in the air, which contaminate rainwater as it falls down and percolates into the ground.
   2. Acid Rain: Tying in with the point above, air pollution turns rainwater acidic as the pollutants mix into it. When this water comes into contact with the soil, it may release any trapped heavy metals which further contaminate this water
   3. Source Water contamination– In some areas, heavy metals are naturally present in groundwater. This news story in the US cited excessive lead levels were found in almost 2000 water systems across 50 US states
   4. Agricultural runoff: Pesticides sprayed on crops contains heavy metals. If the farm is situated up-slope from a water source, there is a high probability that excess pesticidal spray may have contaminated the water at some point or the other.
   5. Incorrect Pesticide Spraying Practices: Another common cause of contamination is due to incorrect spraying practices which contaminates water sources nearby
   6. Industrial Runoff: Waste from factories and industrial plants contains multiple heavy metals in high concentrations. If not correctly disposed, it can easily contaminate water bodies nearby
   7. Lead Plumbing: There are multiple sources of lead in our plumbing through which it can enter the water supply. Read this article for more on how to identify if you have lead plumbing

Health effects of Heavy Metals in Water:

Acute heavy metal poisoning, where you ingest a high dose of heavy metal(s) at once, can lead to serious health issues. However, it is easier to diagnose than chronic heavy metal toxicity. Chronic heavy metal toxicity refers to the scenario where someone consumes just a little bit of heavy metal(s) through a contaminated water source everyday.

The second case is tougher to diagnose for doctors because the symptoms are quite generic and the progression of side effects is quite slow. This is because heavy metals accumulate in the body over time and may not start causing adverse effects till a later date. According to hydroviv.com:

“Symptoms of chronic heavy metal toxicity can include but are not limited to headaches, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and weakness.”

Existing Regulations on Heavy Metals:

According to the US Environmental protection Agency(USEPA) Regulations, here are the permissible limits in water for few of the common heavy metals:

• Lead: 150 ppb(parts per billion)
• Antimony: 6 ppb
• Arsenic: 10 ppb
• Mercury: 2 ppb
• Barium: 2000 ppb
• Beryllium: 4 ppb
• Cadmium: 5 ppb
• Chromium: 100 ppb
• Fluoride: 4000 ppb
• Selenium: 50 ppb

Drawback of EPA Regulations on Heavy Metals in Water:

According to me, it is best to completely filter out all heavy metals because heavy metals tend to accumulate in our bodies over time and continual exposure, even at small concentrations can lead to serious health problems later on.

How To Test For Heavy Metals At Home:

The biggest barrier to identifying heavy metals at home is that most of them have no particular odor or taste, nor do they impart any color to the water.

Secondly, they become dangerous at parts per billion levels(ppb) which can’t be picked up by TDS meters-calibrated to parts per million(ppm).

Having said that, there are a few things you can do to check for heavy metals at home:

• Blood tests
• Hair Tests
• Urine Testing
• Water Testing Kits– Good preliminary test

Blood Tests:

According to Dr. Sarah Carnes, this method is unreliable because heavy metals remain in the bloodstream only for a few weeks until they either are excreted or stored in the body. At that point, even if one gets a blood test done and the blood test comes clear, heavy metal poisoning still can’t be ruled out, since they might’ve accumulated inside.

For acute cases though, where a clear source of ingestion of heavy metals is identified(such as kids chewing on lead car keys) and a rapid progression of symptoms comes in, blood tests are effective.

Hair Tests:

The thing with heavy meals is, once they’re inside the human body, they are usually excreted through hair, sweat, urine, stool, menses, etc. However, if the body isn’t able to excrete them(could be due to many other health reasons, such as a weakened immune system) they get stored inside our tissues, bones and organs.

This is why heavy metals are called bioaccumulators- they tend to accumulate in the body over time.

Similar to blood tests, hair tests are also unreliable in most cases because the results don’t give a conclusive answer. Here’s why:

If the results show low concentration of heavy metals, it can mean that either:

• There aren’t a lot of heavy metals in the body
• There are a high concentration of heavy metals, but the body isn’t excreting them properly

Similarly, if the results show a high concentration of heavy metals, it can mean that either:

• The body is excreting them efficiently and very little heavy metals remain inside the body
• That the body is excreting a lot of heavy metals but a high concentration of heavy metals still exist in the body

Also, washing hair makes this testing unreliable. US people should get theirs tested at Trace Elements

Urine Tests:

Has the same pitfalls as the hair tests, as there are really no conclusive answers. The best way to test that seemed to make logical sense to me was to get a normal or ‘unprovoked’ urine test as a baseline, and then get a ‘provoked’ urine test- which basically means ingesting a chelating or binding agent that flushes out all the heavy metals through the kidneys in the form of urine.

When the ‘unprovoked’ and ‘provoked’ test results are compared, an accurate assessment can be made by the doctors. This shouldn’t be attempted without a doctor’s advice, however, because it is quite dangerous for the kidneys.

Normal/Unprovoked urine tests for heavy metals can be easily ordered online, such as this one by Everly Well

Water Testing Kits:

As a first step before you go for the more expensive heavy metal tests, I’d say it’s better to buy a home water test kit. They are very easy to use- consisting of strips that can be dipped in water and turn a certain color to indicate which contaminant it contains.

There aren’t a lot of comprehensive home test kits that for heavy metals, though. I found this one on Amazon that tests for Lead, Copper and Iron.

My Recommendation For Testing Heavy Metals At Home:

Water suppliers in the US are required to publish an annual water quality report and provide the same to all consumers. You can look it up online for your particular supplier or even request them for it.

The best way to know your current water quality though, would be to get a water test done from a local lab. If you’ve been experiencing some of the heavy metal associated symptoms listed above, it might be a good idea to invest in a lab test.

As a preliminary step, you could get an at-home test kit for heavy metals, and then if the results seem alarming, you could go for a lab test.

As for the hair, urine and blood test options- they may give inconclusive results, so take them only as a preliminary test. Best to take the doctor’s advice when it comes to interpreting the results.

How To Remove Heavy Metals From Drinking Water:

RO Water Filters:

There are many water filtration technologies that you could go for, but if you’re really concerned about the heavy metal concentration in your water, I’d suggest going for a RO water filter, such as this one on Amazon. While they waste a lot of water, they are the most effective water filtration technology in the market, as they virtually remove all contaminants in water.

You can read more about RO purifiers in this comparison post I wrote about the 3 main water filter technologies today – RO Vs UV Vs UF

Whole house heavy metal water filters:

If you’re thinking long term and have correctly identified heavy metal contamination in your water, getting a whole house filter might make sense, especially because of how expensive they are(usually in the range of $600-$1000+). A lot of them are designed to remove the common heavy metals, chlorine, chloramines etc from water, as well as last a long time- such as this one on Amazon, that is supposed to last 10 years!

If you want to know the exact specifications, it’s best to check out the manufacturer’s website or speak to their representatives on the phone.

Conclusion:

Removing heavy metals from water can be a costly process. Keep in mind that heavy metals are dangerous whether they’re present in your drinking water or even the water you shower and wash your hands in.

If you can afford it, getting a whole house water filter makes sense, and solves all problems in one go.However, if you cannot, here’s what I recommend:

• Get a RO water purifier for drinking purposes
• Get a KDF shower and tap filter, such as this one on Amazon– removes upto 98% of water soluble heavy metals, among other common contaminants.
• Use filtered water for washing clothes

Hope you enjoyed the article, and if you found this helpful, do share it with a friend who you think might need it. Or at least tell them what you learned! 

I was a fat kid in my early teens. Around 13-14 years old, I decided to do something about it and started practising Yoga. Within 8-9 months- I’d shed almost 15 kilos following just these principles.

Here’s what I did:

1. Daily routine of a yogic breathing exercise called pranayaam- 30 mins
2. Ate clean and healthy- avoided certain foods like red meat, stocked up on boiled veggies, the works
3. Started drinking more water and at the right times

#3 is what I’m here to expand on today. Drinking enough water and in the correct manner was imperative for me to lose weight.

And while I picked up a majority of these habits almost 10 years ago, a few of these I just started implementing while researching for this article.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to drink water correctly:

Sipping Vs Gulping Water- Does It Matter How Fast You Drink?

Absolutely it does.

You see, this is one of the bad habits I picked up over the years. Everytime I drank water, I gulped down almost half a bottle.

Initially, it was a way to force myself to drink more water because I knew I’d forget to drink water during the day- so I got into the habit of drinking a litre of water within a span of minutes.

Then I could go back to whatever I was doing and have my next drink several hours later, when I’d down another litre. Repeat this once more and I’d reach my quota for the day.

Here’s the problem with that- it’s useless.

Our kidneys are responsible for processing the waste material from our blood and forming urine, among other things. However, they cannot process more than a certain amount of water every day, and by gulping water down every now and then, we risk stressing out our kidneys.

So how much water should you drink per hour?

No more than 0.8- 1L. That is the general amount of water that a pair of healthy kidneys can process every hour.

If we drink more that, we put ourselves at risk for hyponatremia- a life threatening condition where the sodium levels in body plummet because of increased water content in the body.

Seriously, even I was shocked to find that people have died from over-hydration.

And yes, while you’d have to drink a lot of water to be even close to that stage, the point here is that when you drink a lot of water in a short period of time, you put undue stress on your kidneys.

Secondly, all that effort put into hydration goes to waste because the body cannot absorb so much water in so little time. It just passes the water out without absorbing most of it. A good indicator of this is if your urine is without color – crystal clear.

So bottom line- sip water slowly over time and don’t gulp it down.

How To Get Into The Habit Of Sipping Water

I’d never thought peeing a clear liquid was anything but normal for the longest time. I’ve been struggling with breaking an old habit of gulping water down all at once from the bottle. These days, even though I’ve been consciously trying to drink relatively small amounts at a time and not gulping water down, my urine still turns out to be a clear liquid.

So Frustrating.

Here’s what I’ve started to do now:

I keep a small paper cup on my desk at all times and pour water into it from my bottle. It’s about 200 mL which is perfect to drink at one time. Repeat this every 30 mins or so.

If you’re in an office environment all day, just grab a paper cup from the water cooler. You could also get a sipper bottle that allows you to sip small amounts.

How Often Should You Drink Water Throughout The Day and How Much?

The short answer is- it depends.

Here’s the long answer. All my research pointed towards these 5 metrics to help you decide.

1. Weight
2. Gender
3. Activity level
4. Climate
5. Other health factors- such as pregnancy or if you’re breastfeeding these days

And while there are no scientific ways I could find to calculate the exact water intake you should have, here’s the bottom line, according to Institute of Medicine, an American Non Profit:

For people older than 19 years, recommended daily water intake for men is 3.7 L and for women- 2.7 L .

This includes indirect water consumption through meals as well- such as soups, milk, etc.

I tend to drink about 4 L a day, because I live in India(hot most of the year!) and I work out 4 times a week for 45 mins. So I need to rehydrate a tad more.

As for your weight, some articles online recommend drinking 2/3rds of your pound weight in oz. (If you weight 180 pounds, drink 120 oz. daily)

Others recommend drinking half your pound weight in oz.

Like I said, not an exact science. These recommendations are all just pointers for you, so treat them as broad guidelines to follow, rather than exact metrics. You now know the range of water intake that is healthy, try to be in that range and don’t worry too much about the exact numbers.

As for how often you should drink during the day- that’s up to you. As long as you don’t drink more than 0.8-1 L every hour, it’s up to you to decide how you want to break up your daily quota throughout the day.(I’ll share my water drinking routine in a bit, few paragraphs down the line)

Cold Water Vs Room Temperature- What’s The Best Temperature To Drink Water?

Short answer?

Room Temperature or warm water.

The reasons, are pretty basic.

Say, it’s a sunny, hot day and you drink a glass of cold water before lunch. Now, your body has to expend energy towards bringing the water to the core body temperature.

How is that a problem?

• It tends to constrict blood vessels and coagulate(or harden) any fats we may have consumed. These hardened fats then may form deposits in our body
• Due to blood vessels constricting, proper blood circulation to all organs gets hindered. If we drink cold water around meal times, it can mess with digestion.

‘Ayurveda’, an ancient Indian medicinal practice, tells us exactly the same things.

“Ice cold water freezes the enzymes and fluids in your gut so your body can’t properly digest food, which creates toxic buildup or ama [aa-ma]. In addition, the blood vessels constrict so the toxic buildup gets stuck inside you instead of draining through your lymph (cleansing) system”

–Tina Shah, Ayurveda Practitioner

Pre-industrialization, everywhere you went in India, you’d see people enjoying cool glasses of water out of earthen pots(matkas). These pots kept water cool throughout the day, around room temperature and even today, some people still prefer to do this than drink cold, refrigerated water.

Warm or hot water has it’s benefits as well:

• Helps cleanse our body of toxins. Warm water allows toxic built up to flow out of our lymph system
• Helps increase blood circulation and boosts metabolism because it raises the body temperature

Bottom line: Avoid cold water as much as you can(I know! I struggle with this too), and drink room temperature-lukewarm water mostly. Notice that I don’t recommend drinking hot water all the time as well, because it can tend to overheat our bodies.

Another important thing.

When should you not drink warm water?

After exercising. Your body temperature is already raised, so you should drink room temperature water to bring it back to normal.

Will You Burn Calories From Drinking Cold Water?

Yes, you will- because the body has to expend energy, as I talked about above. But the calorie burn is so minimal that it’s not even worth thinking of.

If you drink 8 glasses of cold water a day, you’ll burn a grand total of:

64 calories.

That’s it.

Cold water does have 1 benefit that I found online. That is, it gets absorbed by our intestines quicker. So we rehydrate quicker than we would by drinking normal water.

I still prefer room temperature water, because in the normal day to day, you usually don’t need that quick rehydration when you have your bottle of water next to you at all times.

Suggested Routine For Drinking Water

Here’s how I drink about 4 Litres of water everyday:

• Wake up and drink 800 mL room temperature water (Or if I feel like it, somedays I’ll take two cups of warm water mixed with half a lemon and 1 teaspoon honey)
• 1 L of water to be sipped over the next few hours(once I reach office) before lunch
• Post lunch, 1 L of water to be sipped before I leave for the day(round 5.30 pm)
• Once home, I may drink another cup or two of water(~400-500 mL)
• I also drink milk twice a day and have yoghurt which covers up the rest of my daily quota

The only time of day I ingest a lot of water, about 800 mL at once, is when I wake up, as it helps flush out toxins and clear the stomach quickly.

If you find it hard to drink that much water, drink as much as you’re comfortable with. Have a cup or two of warm water with some lemon and honey. I find that to be equally effective.

Keep in mind that I drink slightly more than most because of the climate here and keeping my activity levels in mind. I didn’t lay my routine out for you to copy, rather modify and use according to your needs.

As long as you’re drinking water within the recommended range I cited above, you’ll be good to go.

But I Don’t Like The Taste! How To Make Tap Water Taste Better

Two common solutions:

• Get a water filter pitcher– for removing the chlorine water taste
• Get a fruit infuser bottle – if you hate the ‘taste’ of plain water

Water Filter Pitcher:

In India, you don’t get tap water that’s pure enough to drink, so everyone has a water purifier at home. The advantage of that is that water tastes great as chlorine and other chemical additives are filtered out.

In a lot of countries though, people drink straight from the tap. I noticed this first when I travelled to the US. However, I also noticed that the water had a slightly odd taste because of the chlorine. While it was just noticeable for me, some people just can’t stand that taste.

If you’re one of those people, the first thing you might want to do is get a pitcher filter. I found a couple of really great ones online that are handy and can remove chlorine as well as other contaminants. You can check them out at Amazon.

Fruit Infusion:

But, even then, if you just don’t like the taste of plain old water- a water filter pitcher won’t be enough. If you’re one of those who can’t drink it because “it tastes like nothing!”, here’s what you can do:

Infuse some fruits into your water. You could add a dash of lemon to your water and make some lemonade or slice up some apples, peaches, pears – really, any sort of fruit you like- tie them up in a muslin cloth and dip them into a jar of water

After a few hours, you can remove the fruit and enjoy your tasty, fruit infused water.

Keep in mind though, that harder fruits like apples or pears take longer to release their juices. However, there are a lot of great recipes online for infusing fruit that you can follow.

And if this process sounds cumbersome, just get a fruit infuser bottle. It’s a neat little product that allows you to place your chopped fruit into a small container inside the bottle that keeps the fruit in place and allows for the juices to get infused at the same time. Check it out on Amazon

How To Increase Water Absorption – Few Tips To Hack Your Hydration

Our body needs minerals to aid the process of hydration. This is why people are advised to drink Gatorade or coconut water after a workout, because they provide water as well as restore the mineral balance in our systems – which rehydrates the body quicker than if they drank plain water.

In the normal day to day, this principle can be used just as well. A few things you can do to absorb water more are:

• Add a squeeze of lemon to your water
• Add a bit of grated ginger to your water
• Add a tbsp of sea salt to your water

All of the above contain elements that bind with water molecules and aid the rehydration process.

Will You Have To Pee All The Time?

There’s no clear recommendation on how much water a person should drink in a day. Which is why there also is no guideline on how many times a person should pee daily.

From my experience- if you’ve just started drinking more water, you will have to make more frequent trips to the toilet. Don’t get scared though, because that’s the normal amount of times you should have to go. Unless you have to go every hour or so- that might mean you have an overactive bladder and you should get that checked out.

Conclusion:

Summing up, here’s the healthiest way to drink water, according to me:

1. Sip, don’t gulp down water
2. Drink 2-3 L everyday(ladies) and 3-4 L daily(men)
3. Get a chlorine water filter if the chlorine taste stops your from drinking more water
4. Get a fruit infuser bottle if you dislike the taste of plain water
5. You can hydrate yourself better by adding some binding elements like sea salt to your water

Hope you enjoyed the article, and learnt something. Stay fresh and drink plenty my friends!

Until next time, please excuse me – I’ve sipped over a litre from my bottle in the last 5 hours while writing this. I really need to go now!

So many of us prefer to get our coffee fix at home, and rightly so. Not everyone can afford Starbucks everyday. But the most frustrating thing with making coffee at home is that it never tastes as good as Starbucks.

The key differentiator between your coffee at home and the one you buy is just 1 thing- plain old water. So yes, you can easily use tap water to make a GREAT cup of coffee at home, as long you keep in mind certain things about your water itself.

Firstly, water makes up about 96% of a cup of coffee and is the most important ingredient. It is of utmost importance that your water have just the right composition of minerals, otherwise you’ll end up with something that tastes like coffee, but not quite as good as you want it to be.

The thing about Starbucks and other coffee chains is that they maintain the same standard tastes across the country because they use professional filtration techniques to ensure that all outlets use the same type of water. Which in turn means they can use they same type of beans and so, they have a scalable business.

So how can you ensure that you get a great cup of coffee at home?

By looking at your tap water and checking what it’s composition is like. In this article, I’ve laid out, step by step, everything you need to know about having the best water for making coffee.

A word of warning though: You will still have to do a bit of experimentation to figure out the best tasting coffee for you. Use this article to arm yourself with the knowledge you’ll need to experiment. Once you’ve figured it out, I’m confident you’ll be able to make great tasting coffee every single day at home.

What is the best water for your coffee machine?

One of the biggest Non-profit trade organizations in the coffee industry, the Specialty Coffee Association of America(SCAA) laid out a few guidelines in 2013 on the best water quality for coffee brewing. They are a bit technical, so bear with me- I’ll break them down, one by one.

According to SCAA guidelines, the best water for coffee has:

1. No odors
2. Clear color
3. No chlorine content
4. Total Dissolved Salts(TDS) in the range of 75-250 mg/L. Optimum- 150 mg/L
5. Calcium Hardness in the range of 17 mg/L to 85 mg/L
6. pH should be between 6.5 and 7.5
7. Total alkalinity near 40 mg/L
8. Sodium levels near 10 mg/L

Here’s the break-down of the guidelines:

Odor, Water Clarity and Chlorine:

It’s pretty self explanatory why water shouldn’t contain odors and color. They are two big indicators that water is impure. However, in a lot of places, such as the US and Europe, people drink chlorinated water straight from the tap. While chlorine is necessary for purifying water, it also imparts a distinct taste and odor to water that tends to spoil the taste of coffee.

Also, according to watertechonline, chlorine, being an oxidative agent, tends to oxidize the oils and aromatics in coffee beans, imparting an earthy or moldy tone to the coffee. I recommend buying a simple water pitcher filter containing activated carbon for removing chlorine, such as this one on Amazon.

Total Dissolved Salts(TDS)

Measuring Total Dissolved Salts(TDS) is a way to know the concentration of minerals in your water. It is important to know 2 things regarding TDS:

1. What is the concentration of the dissolved salts in your water?
2. What is the composition of these salts?

Importance of Knowing The TDS Concentration:

The flavor in coffee beans doesn’t just infuse into water on it’s own – it needs the right ingredients. These ‘right’ ingredients are minerals. You see, minerals are needed, in the right quantities, to extract the coffee flavor.

And you need the right type of minerals too. For instance, according to Baristainstitute.com Magnesium is slightly better at extracting the coffee flavor than Calcium. But that’s more advanced stuff than you should worry about.

For now, just keep it in mind that your water should have the TDS concentration in the range 75-250 mg/L, with an optimum mineral concentration at around 150 mg/L. You can get a TDS meter, such as this one on Amazon for this purpose.

Importance of Knowing the TDS Composition:

Keep in mind that the SCAA guidelines do not specify what should be the composition of the Total Dissolved salts in water. Generally though, commonly found minerals in water are Calcium, Iron, Manganese and Magnesium. Some, such as lead or nitrates, can be downright dangerous, even at very small concentrations.(You can read more about this topic here)

If you’re unsure about the composition of the dissolved salts in your water, I recommend getting a home water testing kit, such as this one on Amazon.

If your water is in the right TDS concentration range, that’s great. If it isn’t or if you find that it contains some dangerous contaminants such as lead, nitrates or mercury, I recommend investing in a RO filter for your home. It’s the only commercially available method to reduce TDS of water at home. Apart from ensuring that you get the best water for your coffee, getting an RO filter has another advantage:

It’ll increase the life of your coffee machine. If your water is hard- i.e: contains an excess of calcium and magnesium salts- it’ll leave scaly white deposits which clogs the coffee machine from the inside.

They are easily available on Amazon as well. If you’d like to know more about this topic you can read this article I wrote: How to decrease TDS in water at home?

Why I Wouldn’t Worry About The Rest of The SCAA Guidelines:

The rest of the guidelines (#5 till #8) talk about sodium and calcium concentrations, alkalinity and pH. These are all things that are mostly controlled by the TDS levels(don’t forget that sodium and calcium are dissolved salts as well) and will take care of themselves, once the TDS levels are brought into the right range.

The crux of the SCAA recommendations, therefore is:

1.     Get your TDS in the correct range, as specified
2.     Ensure no odors, that water is clear ad contains no chlorine.

As a home brewer, I believe doing just these two things will put you miles ahead of the average person. The rest of the recommendations are nice to haves. If you’re still interested, here’s a brief on how they affect the taste of your coffee.

How pH of water affects coffee taste:

•       pH is a metric for knowing how acidic or basic a particular material is. It works on a scale of 0-14, where 0 is the most acidic, 7 is neutral and 14 is the most basic(or alkaline).
•       SCAA recommends that your water be in the neutral range so as to not tilt the balance of flavor to either the acidic end(vinegary) or alkaline end(flat, earthy).

How Sodium affects taste of coffee:

Sodium content is usually a little high in homes where a water softener is used. If in excess, it tends to impart a salty taste to water, and is dangerous for people who are on a low sodium diet.

How Calcium affects the taste of coffee:

Calcium and Magnesium are two minerals usually found in most water supplies. They give water a pleasant taste, and are responsible for extracting the flavor from coffee beans. In excess however, calcium will just give a dry, moldy flavor to the brew.

How Alkalinity affects the taste of coffee:

Alkalinity is usually dependent on the concentration of carbonated and bicarbonates in water, which are negatively charged and hence, are basic. They counteract the weakly acidic coffee beans. In the right composition, they ensure the taste isn’t too strong or vinegary in taste. If in excess, they impart a flat taste to the coffee.

They are usually present in water in the form of calcium and/or magnesium carbonate salts, which is also known as temporary hardness in water.

Final Tip On Using Your Tap Water For Brewing Coffee

I found a really practical suggestion online regarding this.

After you’ve figured out the TDS of your water and found out how hard it is, contact a local coffee brewery-they usually know the type of coffee beans that would be best suited as they test their brews in local waters too. If you’re unable to do this, the general rule of thumb is: 

If your water is hard, use a subtly roasted batch of coffee beans. If the TDS levels in your water are low, use a strong roasted batch because the extraction capability of the water would be that much lesser.

Conclusion

Anyone can brew a great cup of coffee at home. You don’t need to buy bottled water for your coffee machines at home like some people do. That’s just not sustainable. Just use your tap water.

You may need to filter it for chlorine and reduce it’s TDS with an RO filter, but these are long term investments- not just for your coffee, but for your health as well. `