Water Recipe Recommendations (scale -vs- taste)

Asaf Karas

Hello all,

While this is a well discussed subject, I'd appreciate any input or reference.

I have decided to add Epsom Salt and Baking Soda to distilled water to "make" my own water. I have done some reading on the subject, including this post, but am still somehow unsure. Given that I don't know how to descale the machine (and I'd be happy to hear from on how to do it) but still want good tasting coffee, I'd like to hear bottom line recommendations for alkalinity and hardness in mg/l CaCo3.

As I understand, and I might be entirely wrong on this, with boiler pressure at 1pi, the water temperature will reach 125c meaning that even 50mg/l hardness and 50mg/l alkalinity will still slowly scale the machine. Right now I'm using 70mg/l hardness and 50mg/l alkalinity.

Thank you,
Asaf

Reiss Gunson

hi asaf

in terms of descaling the machine there is nothing magical about it; you undo all the pipes and all fittings from the boiler and you place the boiler and all the pipes in an ultra sonic tank with acid and heat the bath to 65C and check in on the progress each day. when the scale has all gone you lift all the items out of the acid bath and rinse them thoroughly in fresh running water & then reassemble the machine

in terms of water you want as high a TDS value as you can for good tasting espresso (in my view), but this will be constrained by the fact that you do not want the total of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate to exceed about 70ppm (mg/L if you prefer)

if you keep the total of magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate under 70ppm i dont think you will have any issues with scaling, despite the technical data that you have quoted stating that some precipitation with occur, which is true but so slowly that it is not an issue

kind regards

reiss.

Christian Marx

thanx for the good information
- hardness below 70ppm (calcium and magnesium)
conribution from my part (interesting article):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26925543

Water with a TDS ranging between 200 and 400 mg/L has been reported to be well liked (Marcussen et al., 2013b; Teillet et al., 2010b),
whereas water with a low TDS is perceived as bitter and metallic
A sensory attribute of interest with respect to liking is freshness. Data from this study show that calcium contributes positively to
freshness (especially at concentrations between 42 and 117 mg Ca/L)

Interestingly, the optimal TDS for freshness appears to be between 190 and about 350 mg/L
this study clearly demonstrates the potential of mineral enrichment for quality improvement of drinking water after reverse osmosis

Christian Marx

same articel: interesting plots

Gesendet von meinem F5321 mit Tapatalk

Christian Marx

good evening
does anybody have experience with correlation: hardness : tds?
my idea (certainly not new..):
jug and filter: measure tds and total hardness of the filtered water
note: tds when the total hardness reaches 80ppm

mesure only tds with a cheap electronic device in the futures in order to know when to change the filter
would that work?

Reiss Gunson

there will be a correlation for sure, but i dont think the correlation will be universal/transferrable due to the extent that water composition varies from place to place

i.e. i think you will need to establish the correlation for your own water

when i was using an in tank BWT filter i would measure the hardness each week with our water hardness test kit and when it rose to an unacceptable level i changed the filter and made a mental note of the number of weeks it took for that to occur and then changed the cartridge at that interval

in london that was every three weeks for the amount of water of a given hardness that we were pulling through the filter

kind regards

reiss.

Michael Wolfson

I make water for my machine by taking RO water and adding some chemicals from a kit purchased from Global Customized Water (who make machines/kits for mostly commercial applications, eg coffee shops). In any event, they told me that water with a TDS over 150 will build up scale in an espresso machine, but under 150 apparently won't. Given the previous discussion, if I use the water that tastes best, it would be TDS of 200 or so, then scale up my machine. Comments? Alternative information? I don't know anything about it other than what they told me.