empirical water v1.5
empirical water v1.5
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Developed by Arby Avanesian - Questions? Let's chat.
Water is the lens through which we appreciate specialty coffee & tea. Why not choose a lens that brings it beautifully into focus?
Easily customize the water to accommodate any coffee roast — See Buffer Guide below.
Expect sweetness, clarity and aromatics like you've never experienced.
Dilute with distilled or deionized water.
Ships free to USA!
What makes this water so special?
What makes this water so special?
Instructions
Instructions
v1.5
Prepare in a 1 liter bottle, or directly in your kettle.
- Add 50 mL (or 50 grams) Hardness.
- Add 0.50 mL (or 0.590 grams) Buffer.
- Add 0.50 mL (or 0.590 grams) Extraction Booster (optional).
- Fill remaining capacity with zero TDS water (about 949 grams).
Editions: Coffee vs Tea
Editions: Coffee vs Tea
The Coffee and Tea Editions are pending differentiation. The Edition selector will stay up in the meantime to indicate that empirical water is genuinely suitable for both coffee and tea.
Buffer Guide
Buffer Guide
As a starting point, use:
- 0.50 mL Buffer for light roast filter coffee and any tea
- 0.50 mL x2 Buffer for medium roast filter coffee
- 0.50 mL x3 Buffer for dark roast filter coffee and any roast as espresso.
For higher intensity, use less buffer. For lower intensity, use more buffer.
Silica
Silica
Empirical Water is the only coffee water on the market to incorporate silica, a mineral that occurs naturally in many of the world's finest mineral waters.
Silica boosts sweetness, mouthfeel, and aftertaste.
Some describe the silica sensation as experiencing the sensory characteristics of your brew in slow motion. Aromatics stick around in your nose, mouth and throat for minutes on end.
If selected, silica will be added to your Hardness concentrate.
Extraction Booster
Extraction Booster
The Extraction Booster is a dropper bottle of mineral concentrate, designed to increase flavor intensity and definition.
Mineral Composition
Mineral Composition
All minerals in Empirical Water can be found in natural mineral waters at comparable concentrations.
v1.5
Ingredients
Ingredients
Hardness: Calcium carbonate, magnesium sulfate, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride.
Buffer: Deionized water, sodium bicarbonate.
Extraction Booster: Deionized water, magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate.
Bonuses with your order
Free 50 mL Measuring Cylinder*
Get a free 50 mL measuring cylinder to help measure your hardness concentrate.
*Add both products to cart to enable discount. Applies once per customer.
1-on-1 Brewing Guidance
When you're accustomed to brewing with the same water for a long time, it can be disorienting to make a switch - especially when the new water is unlike anything else on the market. That's why as the developer, I'm offering my time to personally assist you in bringing the best out of your coffee or tea with Empirical Water.
Guidance includes:
- 1-on-1 Brewing Consultations — Your order confirmation includes my personal contact information. From then on, I'll be available 7 days a week to personally help you every step of the way to brew the best coffee or tea you've ever tasted. Text (or email) me about how your brews are going, and I'll be there to help you unleash the full potential of your brews.
- Brew Video Analysis — Record your brew using your phone camera and send it over. I'll analyze your brew, help you figure out what's going wrong, and explain how to fix it.
Official Discord Access
Water is the most impactful brewing variable. So when you keep the water constant between your setup and someone else's, you gain the advantage of having truly consistent and valuable conversations around coffee.
In the Empirical Water Discord, you'll find people who brew similar coffees with similar brewing methods using the same water. There, you can directly copy already-perfected brew recipes with immediate success — for instantly dialed-in brews.
200% Extra Buffer
All orders come with triple the required amount of buffer.
With extra buffer, you can accomplish two things:
- Reduce harshness — Less bitterness and astringency.
- Boost texture — For lusciously thick brews.
Extra buffer generally translates to a better experience with medium and darker roasts.
Guarantees
Outbrew Yourself or Pay $0
If Empirical Water isn't producing the best coffee you've ever brewed within 30 days, we refuse to take your money - And you can keep the product, too.
See Refund Policy.
Less Effort, Better Coffee
Brewing good coffee with Empirical Water is easy. After all, it's specifically designed to draw out sweetness, texture and aromatics from coffee without the potential for bitterness or astringency.
What does this mean for your job as the brewer?
It means you have a larger sweet spot to dial into! You won't have to use up the first quarter of the bag finding a suitable grind, temperature, et cetera. With Empirical Water, coffee tastes good at a wide range of brewing parameters. And when you do get those parameters just right, coffee becomes truly evocative.
Empirical Water gives your brew quality a higher floor, AND a higher ceiling. Brew your coffee with Empirical Water and you'll outbrew yourself, guaranteed.
Same Day Order Fulfillment
Orders submitted by 10 PM Pacific Time will be fulfilled the same day. All orders are shipped through USPS, and picked up the next day, minus Sundays.
Your Business Helps Those in Need
6% of sales are donated to Water for People, a non-profit organization working across nine countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to address the global water crisis and equip communities with lasting access to clean water and sanitation services – for Everyone, Forever.
The taste and texture of this water were exactly what my espresso was missing. It added another layer of smoothness as well as balancing acidity.
Arby's water excels at powerful fore-flavor but lacks somewhat in aftertaste and huigan.
The current version is much better with regards to the aftertaste however it could still use some improvement. The fore-flavor is amazing though.
Still by far the best water I've found for making tea, highly recommend trying.
The main advantage I see from this water is arby is always trying to improve from his recipe each iteration keeps getting better and better meanwhile other water profiles stay stagnant. I've tried multiple versions of empirical water or the older name truth serum I'll be reviewing 1.41. So the biggest difference I see from this version and older ones like 1.3 is sweetness this one is super sweet when I had it with 2018 intrigue from crimsons lotus it was almost unbearable flavor notes popped very well from initial to aftertaste a very intense but enjoyable session. Then I switched to a lbz from LP and the tea was inconsistent some sessions better then others with one being too weak and others being stronger aftertaste also varied. then I switched to another baozhang from the LP beginner package and it also didn't brew well too weak. This is one of the problems I have with this recipe it's weirdly inconsistent with extraction when it's extracting well it's very balanced outside of aftertaste that varies even more. But when it's not extracting well you can tell it's not performing to level that it can. The biggest complaint I have is aftertaste with sheng which is something I think takes off the balance and is something that arby needs to work on.
Was having some trouble with my tea/coffee. Both puer and pourover were struggling with depth and I found myself not wanting to explore these further.
I did a little digging, and found James Hoffman talking about the importance of minerality. I decided to give it a shot. I found some other brands, but really wasn’t impressed with the mediocre reviews. Then I found Arby, the person behind this company, writing this absurd blog posts (from like 2018) about how he just found the perfect water formula, and how it only took 20 minerals to recreate it! To an outsider like me, it looked insane, but it made sense that someone passionate about this would have refined their formula to be so complex, because they understood all the variables at play.
Well anyway, I soon found out he actually started his own brand, and I decided to give it a shot. I’m very happy with the product, especially after conducting multiple blind taste tests with myself and the whole family, and seeing how Empirical Water won every time. If you’re actually reading this review, just buy the goddamned product, it’s like $0.50 per 250 mL cup of coffee, and it will improve the taste by a ton.
I am no means a cultured coffee aficionado, but I love my very bold dark roast brews at 14.25:1. I use both a cone drip (Brevelle BDC-455) on a strong setting with an unbleached Melita cone filter when rushed and a Chemex pour over with an unbleached Chemex square filter when I am into some time investment, both with the same water/coffee ratios. That being said they are on the bold side. I have used other reminalized water products as well as some home based attempts. With Empirical Water I am finding my brews are more smooth without loss of the flavor boldness. I am using the 1.3 and the 1.4 versions of Empirical Water mixing formulas. I have not adjusted buffer conc. to accommodate the dark roast, that is something to try later, but I am more than satisfied with the results I am getting from the 1.4 ver. Empirical Water! I was skeptical that CaCO3 in an aqueous solution would be so beneficial to the enhanced coffee richness and sweetness, but it really is the key to the best coffee I am brewing. Thank you Arby for all your research and experimentation!
The goal has always been to take my personal enjoyment of coffee and tea, and transfer that to others. It's downright special to hear that calcium carbonate has made the difference for you. Best of luck in your coffee brewing journey!
Using a water concentrate such as this is so underrated when it comes to playing with the different variables in your coffee. Typically the focus is on beans, grind size, equipment, and preparation methods (puck prep, pouring technique, etc). Water is rarely thought of, outside of what type of filtered water to use, so when I was given the opportunity to try this I was excited to see what affect it would have on my coffee. And I have to say, it definitely did not disappoint. I noticed right away that my espresso tasted more lively and fruity, thanks to the water bringing those lesser tasting notes to the front and really highlighting the flavors I couldn’t taste before. I also tried it with my pour over and really enjoyed the taste as well.
I highly recommend giving this a try and letting the results speak for themselves. This is one part of your coffee that you don’t need to spend the time perfecting, like you have to do with other variables, such as grind size or distribution technique. You just add your water to the included bag, put in a measured amount of the hardness and buffer liquids, and you’re ready to go. You won’t take water for granted anymore after using this, I know I don’t.
They were very good about shipping my item quickly! Friendly people to interact with too.
Guarantee consistent brews with water curated for your needs.
I love the smoothness, the ease of swallowing, the extension and clarity of aftertaste. Empirical Water is a beautiful water that has reinvigorated my tea experience.
A significant step up in clarity of flavor and texture for my home pour over coffee setup compared to similar water mineral treatments on the market. Wonderful!
Water is more important for bringing out coffee's flavor characteristics than any other variable (more than grinders and brewers), and Empirical Water by far outperforms any of the other popular brands on the market. So much greater complexity and intensity, with bag notes clearly presented to the forefront.