by Adam Churchill

Created on: April 26, 2008   Last Updated: September 05, 2010

No. And yes, at the same time. lol.

While coffee is filtered, before it hits your' cup, it also tends to bring along the characteristics of the water it started as.

A cup of coffee brewed from Aquafina water tastes rather... boring. As does Aquafina water.

Although a really amusing person can make raspberry coffee using the Flavor Splash variety.

I think the biggest question is not whether you should use filtered water or not, but rather, whether or not your tap-water is good enough to drink!

During spring run off, floods, whatever, water quality is absurdly poor. So in other words, it's not drinkable. You have to boil it, and filter it, before using it to make coffee.

The lazy amongst us, will simply use bottled water, while Grammy will insist you get it cleaner, doing it yourself. And she may actually be right, considering that bottled water is stored in plastic bottles for weeks on end, before getting to the store you buy it at. And you just don't know how they clean their water, either. They could be using that Bis-phenol stuff that's the new water-bottle scare, or large amounts of Chlorine.

Spring water, or water from rivers, is rarely immediately drinkable, but can be used for coffee, just fine.

Tea, on the other hand, is a different story. Your tea is the water you put in it, with flavorings added from plants, roots, and what not.

If your tap-water has high amounts of chlorine, you get very chlorinated tea.

Copper pipes means coppery-tasting water.

Plastic pipes usually mean boring water.

You get the picture.
However, if you can drink your tap-water, without having to filter it, there is absolutely no reason you can't make coffee or tea with it.

Even if you have a boil-water advisory, or get your water from a spring, and boil it first anyways, that water, once boiled, often makes better tasting coffee than even the best, and purest, of bottled water. Because bottled water is stagnant, boring, and without anything but whatever they used to clean it. And again, I refer back to the Bis-phenol water-bottle scare.

Whether or not it tastes better? That's your judgement.

I like my coffee to be light-roasted, and lightly chlorinated, so I find tap water just fine.

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