As it happens, however, the issue of safety strongly affects the issue of taste. This is because most city water systems are forced for safety reasons to add chlorine to the water people drink, and it’s a fact that chlorine adds a tangy, unpleasant savor to water. But NYC water is different. Flowing from pure artesian aquifers upstate, this water needs no chlorine and tastes wonderful! Last month, a Good Morning America studio audience, asked to compare various top of the line spring waters to NYC tap water, picked NYC tap water as the clear favorite. More people preferred this tap water than the total of people who preferred either Poland Springs or Evian!
Most New Yorkers don’t recognize how lucky they are to drink coffee made from what is arguably the best water in the country. After all, coffee is mostly water. And in most other cities, such as Philadelphia, for example, coffee bars and restaurants almost invariably use chlorinated tap-water to brew their coffee. This means that, no matter how tasty and subtle the brewed coffee beans could have been, the drink as served is degraded and debased by the unpleasant chlorine tang. To put it another way, chlorine covers up and corrupts the flavor of the coffee in your cup.
So New Yorkers should count themselves as the aristocrats of coffee drinkers, among the priviledged few who consistently partake of really good taste in the brewed coffee they enjoy!
When you’re having coffee out, you can’t do anything about the chlorine your water system may be adding to water. When you’re home, you can greatly improve the taste of your coffee by using bottled spring water to brew it.
