The quality of water is impt for your coffee ... both the taste of the coffee & the longevity of the machine.
The water actually serves as the medium for flavor.
magnesium (Mg+2) and calcium (Ca+2) are impt.
Primarily, we are looking for clean, filtered water that has some but not too much mineral content.
For most optimal results:
hardness above 45ppm and below 80ppm.(ideal 68ppm)
a pH between 7 and 8.5
Keep chloride below 60ppm. Less than 30ppm is ideal
Water hardness refers to the magnesium and calcium minerality of water
Use a water softener if you get a measurement above 85 parts per million (PPM)
Water that is too hard can cause excessive scale buildup inside your machine.
But if water is too soft your coffee won’t taste so good.
So just using demineralised water isn't a great idea.
Youve got to get the perfect balance .... as if this exists.
I think its all personal taste
For the record, Sydney/Illawarra tap water has pretty good results:
Hardness: 27 - 36 ppm
PH: 7.79 - 7.96
So maybe just use a brita filter to remove excess chlorine and you are ok.
You can also easily get rid of chlorine by letting water sit on the counter for an hour or so.
I like the taste of Sydney water.
You will still need to descale the machine .
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Or you can make your water.
There are so many recipes out there on the net.
Most Mineral recipes use these components:
Distilled water
Baking soda - bicarb soda (NaHCO3)
Epsom salt - magnesium sulfate (MgSO4•7H2O)
Magnesium chloride hexahydrate (MgCl2•6H2O)
Calcium chloride anhydrous (CaCl2)
Potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3)
The ratios of the components vary widely.
I think I just need to experiment.
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The simplest ones use just baking soda, epsom salts & distilled water.
They don't use calcium & instead use Mg.... This protects against scale build up.
The baking soda controls the PH & Epsom adds Mg.
Play around with these 3 simple ingredients.
Once you have found one recipe you like add the other ingredients.
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The basic idea is the same . Make two concentrate solutions and add small
portions of these to distilled water.
The concentrate solutions are:
Baking soda to make the buffer solution (1L)
Epsom salts to make the hardness solution (1L)
1. dissolve 1.68 g of baking soda into 1L of water (to make the 1L buffer solution).
2. dissolve 2.45g of Epsom salts into 1L of water (to make the 1L hardness solution).
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Recipe 1:
159g of Buffer solution
321g of Hardness solution
3520g distilled water
(this basically gives you a 4L bottle of brewing water)
Its very close to the
Barista Hustle Water Recipe
40.1g Buffer solution
80.7g Hardness solution
879.2g DI water
(this basically gives you a 1L bottle of brewing water)
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These recipes are from Barista hustle
These following recipes use the same idea as above.
Make two concentrates (buffer & hardness) in 1L bottles.
Weigh each concentrate according to the recipe & add them to the 3rd bottle that has DI water
11.5g Buffer solution
23.7g Hardness solution
964.8g DeIonised water
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WOC (world of coffee) Budapest
40.1g Buffer solution
51.2g Hardness solution
908.7g DI water
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SCA
40.1g Buffer solution
68.6g Hardness solution
891.3g DI water
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This is the famous Matt Perger recipe.
Add 8.6g bicarb soda, and 25g epsom salt to 500g distilled water. This is your concentrate.
Add 2g of the concentrate to 500g distilled water. This is your brewing water.
Doing the math, 250 x 0.5L = 125 litres (approximately of brew water).
Of course weigh everything rather than use approximate volumes.
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Links
Many thanks to Coffeeadastra
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