Coffee Works Express CEO Fabio Cordovado and National Sales Manager Vince Zappia reflect on a partnership with BRITA and how its water filtration supports the entire specialty coffee supply chain.
Making great coffee might be an art, but in the end, it all comes down to science. If you want to get the best from your coffee, you need to consider exactly what goes into it, and most of that is water.
Coffee Works Express (CWE), an Australian coffee machine and equipment distributor, strives to provide the best quality to our growing customer base, and our long-standing partnership with water filtration company BRITA has allowed us to do just that.
When BRITA’s water filtration solutions were proposed to CWE in 2016, we were using a combination of drop-in carbon filters and ion resin exchange filters, so BRITA offering all these in one seemed like a good fit.
BRITA provides a range of filters along with a series of different sized filters suitable for tackling water impurities. Unfiltered water can contain contaminations including chlorine, organic compounds and limescale, all of which can affect the flavour and dull its appearance, making the drink less appealing.
All BRITA water filtration systems reduce chlorine and organic water compounds – and almost all can adjust the mineral level. Filtering these things out of the water also enables the barista to bring out the full aroma and flavour of their coffee.
Besides defining the taste of coffee, water filtration is critical to prolonging the integrity and functionality of the espresso machine.
When it comes to serving an excellent cup time and again, ensuring your staff have the knowledge to fix and effectively maintain espresso equipment is vital. Don’t forget to implement maintenance schedules, so that your water filters are exchanged on time and continue to optimise your water supply.
While you want a bit of calcium and magnesium for the coffee extraction, too much of it will cause some to be left behind in the boiler, causing scale to accumulate. The key to a healthy coffee machine is prevention, not letting problems build up in the first place.
This is something BRITA can help with. It offers tailored packages that can relieve the pressure by supporting operators with preventative maintenance on equipment. By offering advice, monitoring filter usage, and carrying out essential filter exchanges, operators can rely on their equipment to have a longer life span and consistently deliver a quality cup of coffee.
At CWE, we work with machines from a variety of manufacturers, including Slayer, Wega, Astoria, Franke, and Isomac, and often each machine will have different requirements based on the materials used. For instance, copper and stainless-steel boilers require different filters, and BRITA allows us to cater to their needs, which is why we promote its filters with every sale.
CWE is involved in our customer’s water filtration every step of the way, helping cafés with the initial installation to regular replacement intervals.
The cafés we work with love using BRITA, firstly because it is respected globally as a reputable brand. Companies also enjoy the simplicity of swapping out cartridges, often doing this themselves to save costs.
The water quality – and amount of work your filter does – differs from state-to-state and city-to-city, so it’s important a café or its supplier be familiar with the local area’s water quality and requirements.
Our wholesale partners use BRITA products to provide the best filtration solution and coffee quality to customers across the nation. Our partners entrust us to recommend which BRITA filters work best depending on the location. For example, BRITA’s hydrogen exchange Quell ST and sodium exchange Finest ranges are each tailored to different levels of water hardness and types of machinery.
The Purity C range is a staple of CWE’s product offering. It guarantees optimum water quality for every application of the coffee machine within the Australian market.
Its quick-change, multi-purpose head allows anyone to easily do a filter interchange between the Purity C Finest and Quell ST offerings, depending on machine boiler types. This removes the need for a technician to change your filter and provides a cost-effective solution.
The Purity C Quell ST is a decarbonisation filter, designed for areas with a carbonate hardness higher than permanent hardness, meaning there is a calcium exchanges with hydrogen, the by-product resulting in softer water. If this type of water is left unfiltered, the carbon will build up as scale in the boiler of the coffee machine, eventually leading to a breakdown. Namely, we recommend the Quell ST filter range for copper boilers and the Finest filter offerings for stainless steel boilers that require pH buffering to help prevent low pH corrosion.
The Purity C Finest range comes in the same sizes as the Quell ST, has a capacity ranging from 1100 to 6000 litres, and specialises in softening water. BRITA filters all use the same filter head and are designed for ease of installation with the ability to fit into tight spaces, with a simple locking mechanism to safe house your filter post installation.
We work closely with our customers to ascertain the café’s critical details, such as the water quality, equipment style, and volume usage. The value of a quick and simple action of water testing is often overlooked, though it is absolutely critical to understand the site’s water quality, thus enabling a café to extract the best flavour characteristics from its coffee.
You don’t work with a company for seven years unless you have complete faith in the product and service they provide. Not only does CWE supply and install BRITA filtration, but we have also become experts in its water dispensing units, servicing many institutions, hotels, and restaurants across Australia.
The needs of the coffee market are forever evolving, and CWE will continue to work with BRITA to provide the best water filtration solution. Thanks to BRITA’s efficiency and the fantastic and professional support from the company, we’ve never had to go with anyone else.
For more information, visit www.brita.com.au or www.cwe.com.au
This article appears in the April 2023 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.