Desalinated supply is low in the minerals that carry flavour. Here is the recipe we give every café we work with in Qatar.
Most cafés in Doha brew with treated desalinated water. It is safe, consistent and almost completely stripped of the magnesium and calcium that pull flavour compounds out of ground coffee.
Target numbers
Aim for 60–80 ppm total hardness and 40 ppm alkalinity. Below that the cup goes thin and sharp; above it, acidity gets muted and the coffee tastes chalky.
A simple remineralisation cartridge after RO gets most bars into range without dosing sachets by hand.
Then fix the grinder, not the recipe
Once water is stable, most consistency problems are grinder problems: worn burrs, heat creep through a busy morning, or retention between dose changes. Water first, grind second, recipe third.
