We became passionate about water because of coffee.

A cup of filter coffee is 98% water. It doesn’t surprise anyone that water is important in making a great brew — but it does surprise people just how big an impact it has.

A cup of coffee that didn’t taste as good as it should have sparked this journey. Founder Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood just couldn’t get this particular coffee to taste good in his shop. The coffee tasted great at the roastery that supplied it, but wasn’t right in the shop, using the same equipment and recipes. Christopher H. Hendon, a regular at the café and chemist at a local university, was in the shop at the time.

This was in 2013. When Maxwell raised the issue with Chris, they wondered if it could be the different waters between the roastery and the shop, allowing different coffees to taste better or worse in seemingly similar environments. They began a journey to study the impact of water on coffee’s flavour. The collaboration gained traction and resulted in a published academic paper and the co-authoring of Water For Coffee — a book that delves into the science and practicalities of water’s impact on coffee.

Whilst working on developing new under-the-counter commercial systems for cafés, Maxwell, Chris and the team realised that there was already a big gap between the systems that were standard in all quality cafés and the devices people could access at home. Café systems could all be adjusted and set to the water at their specific locations. There was nothing similar for home use.

As baristas, cafés and roasteries started to teach their customers how to make better coffee at home, they kept hitting a wall when it came to water. Some die-hard coffee fans would make water with mineral salts, others would buy wasteful and expensive bottled water.

In early 2017, we struck upon the innovation — what if we took an everyday accessible water filter format, like a home filter jug and integrated a variable filter system into it?

This was the birth of Peak Water — and we began designing the world’s first adjustable gravity fed water filter jug.

In 2018, we launched a successful Kickstarter campaign and in 2019 started taking pre-orders, before officially launching Peak Water V1 in 2020.

Our mission at Peak Water is to make great water accessible, allowing people around the world to share the experience of exceptional coffee.