APAX LAB Water Minerals for Coffee (Box Set)

I had always second guessed diving in to water chemistry for my coffee, but it has truely been worth it. I tested with friends using distilled with APAX drops, and they all noticed a huge difference compared to (good tasting) tap water. The hardness of the local water definitely makes a huge difference in the clarity and bright notes of the coffee I enjoy, and using the drops with distilled has improved those aspects a lot.

Tasty and easy method to improve your coffee, especially useful for espresso.

Firstly, this doesn't really blow Third Wave Water out of the park. I dilute TWW to 50% and find that produces excellent cups.

Where APAX shines is in customization. Each bottle helps you perceive different flavours — acidity, sweetness, florals — and when used together they are greater than the sum of their parts. For example, there's profiles for Washed, Natural, and Heavily Fermented coffees. Following these profiles has led to very good results.

The learning curve comes from the sheer amount of options. There's 3 bottles, 8 recipes, and you still have to factor in updated extraction using just distilled water. It can be overwhelming, and we all know that overwhelm → changing too many variables → bad cups. After a couple weeks however, I found what worked for me and I don't think I'm going back to TWW.

The creators of Apax claim that Tonic lets the acidity shine Jamm is for sweetness and Lylac is supposed to highlight floral notes but they don`t really work like that! They are all different combination Magnesium, Calcium, Potassium and Sodium and if your coffee doesn`t have those notes they would not help at all! In their tasting videos they add a drop of Tonic to the coffee and the taster says WOW it has more acidity and the the next cup gets some Jamm drops and the taster say WOW this is jammy! Honestly, from my experience it doesn`t work like that at all! The only advantage that Apax has over Lotus or other coffee water products is that it`s not as concentrated so you can use it even for a 100 ml cup of coffee but its more expensive and has a shorter shelf life. Another disadvantage is that it`s not homogenized and has to be shaken before use.