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Has anyone ever tried it yet? What flavor/mouthfeel/extraction benefits are there, if any?

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    Is the sparkling water also mineral water? Cause, mineralization has positive effects to extraction. However, water hardness is not preferable. But, hardness is the kind of mineralization that depends on Calcium or Potassium... Difficult question.
    – MTSan
    Jun 22, 2017 at 14:15

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If you heat the water as per most brewing methods, it would no longer be carbonated/sparkling by the time you brewed with it.

You would thus be confined to a cold-brew method, and if you wanted the water to remain carbonated you'd have to cold brew in a sealed container. That would be moderately inconvenient but should be possible.

Or you could brew coffee by any means and force carbonate it after the fact, which would thus have no effect on the brewing.

Never tried it, don't find the idea personally interesting, but all it should cost you to try would be a bottle of sparking water and the hassle of getting the coffee grounds into it, waiting a day or so, and then pouring it out through a filter and cleaning up the mess before recycling the bottle. Please report your results.

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  • Will do. Will think about ways to figure it out... Thanks!
    – farankoshan
    Jun 23, 2017 at 7:36
  • Probably funnel (or paper funnel) grounds into an empty bottle (preferably pre-chilled) then fill with chilled sparkling water and cap as fast as possible, set in fridge, shake occasionally (not right before you decant.) Decant through a filter.
    – Ecnerwal
    Jun 23, 2017 at 15:37
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Good coffee is extracted via highly measured methods, methods that attempt to always replicate uniform extraction.

Blooming is a step taken in drip/pourover and sometimes full immersion methods to help coffee grounds degas before the proper extraction. This is because as gas leaves the coffee, it cannot simultaneously absorb water.

Thus, using sparkling water is heavily detrimental and it introduces a large amount of bubbling which reduces actual coffee-to-water contact and result with an poorly extracted cup born from an inconsistent extraction.

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  • This does make sense - less contact because of the water bubbles. I guess I only wondered because sparkling water is often served with coffee, just like still water is often served. It got me thinking if a "bubbly" would help at all. Guess not enough to get the whole world drinking.
    – farankoshan
    Jun 23, 2017 at 7:34
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The other issue you'll run into is that sparkling water is actually pretty acidic, and that's going to change the overall extraction process as well.

If you want sparkling coffee, make cold brew and then put it in something like a Sodastream to force-carbonate it.

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I tried it this weekend. The Nespresso machine sputtered and wheezed a bit, then shut down with blinking lights, and the pod inside had the foil blown off and there were grounds in the hopper. Bad idea.

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  • That seems very strange that sparkling water would cause a mechanical issue with your machine.
    – Mayo
    Mar 26, 2018 at 12:56
  • Brewing is something, evaporating already gaseous water in a pressurized chamber is another thing. Probably, pressure really built up. Then, dusty salts of Calcium and Potassium (formed when heated) clogged some fine tubes inside; as a few months of scale already is already inside a glass of mineral water. French-press, filters or maybe moka pot could be safer, I assume.
    – MTSan
    Mar 26, 2018 at 17:28
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!Play scientific experiment for carbonated water. Same type of grind added to the exact same level a French press. Carbonated cold water provided via SodaStream. Then heated to 200° rapidly on stove. Then added to a measuring device to measure carbonation levels. Or CO2 levels being excreted from the top. As a standard I did this once with regular 200-degree water and ones with carbonated 200-degree water. And both times I let the grinds degress or the gas at the beginning. But the same amount of water. Upon filling the French press the rest of the way. I started a stopwatch for approximately five minutes. I could tell a instant difference in the darkness and richness of the Brew in the carbonated water versus the plane water. Also noted richer taste. After the Brewing process. The carbonated water was no longer carbonated but did extract more from the coffee. Carbonated water is not simply bubbles and how carbonated water works in Brewing process is far different than just blowing bubbles through the grinds. There's interesting interaction that happens when carbonated water touches something course. I got these ideas from watching a detailed video on bubbles and the different kinds and was particularly interested in CO2 carbonation. My next experiment I want to try and add ultrasonic waves or the same technology they use to examine fetus growing. Known as ultrasound being pumped directly through the carbonated water in the time of the coffee grinds. Video I watched adding ultrasonic waves to microscopic carbonated water points causes the bubbles to go from a nice round shape to a rather violent sharp point more like a bracket gear then a perfect sphere. And removing dirt on steel sheet it showed a 98% increase in cleaning power. I'm wondering what this could do to coffee grinds. Got to love it when science turns delicious.sean w

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