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I can admit it - I am a coffee snob.

I used to not care. I could use any ground roast that had been on my grocer's shelves in its metal can for some unknown length of time and it didn't bother me. I thought all coffee was bitter and unpleasant and I drank it anyway.

Coffee house brews were usually better than home brewed. They always tasted cleaner and fresher to me and eventually I found myself quite addicted to both the aroma and flavor of a good cup of coffee.

As my taste for coffee grew, I began to experiment with different roasts and different blends. Sumatra beats Columbian for me. Kona beats Blue Mountain. Whatever. But still I couldn't manage to get that rich-but-not-bitter coffee house taste at home.

And then I moved to a location where the tap water is almost undrinkable. We bought a refrigerator that provides filtered water; we bought a water-filtering pitcher; and we bought a water-filtering coffee maker. It was all intended to remove the dirty, chalky taste from the hard, mineral-laden water flowing through our pipes. Little did we know the unintended consequences the water filtration would have.

Everything we made with water from vegetables to powdered beverages tasted better. And perhaps the most noticeable improvement was in our coffee. It went from being slightly bitter to having the clean, fresh taste of our corner coffee house. Ah-ha! Suddenly we'd found the secret! While the water in our prior house was reasonably palatable, it had enough impurities in it to adversely affect the taste of our morning java, we just weren't aware of it. It took moving to an area with really poor water quality to show us both how bad coffee can really be, and how important filtering the water is.

I will never again brew a pot of coffee with unfiltered water. It's just not worth it. Life is too short to drink a bad brew.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Pear.
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