Ideal water hardness

[bugbus]

In anticipation of my Spaz delivery, I was just reviewing my water setup and reread the water faq http://www.big-rick.com/coffee/waterfaq.html and there appears to be a tradeoff between the ideal hardness of water for espresso taste and for keeping your machine scale free:

100 ppm = ideal coffee taste = scale
<10 ppm = reduced coffee taste = 0 scale

I couldn't make any sense of the aged pool testing kit I uncovered in storage so I plan on buying a kit to test my water tomorrow. I have recently installed (I wrote the check) a whole house water softening system and received free a 5 stage RO drinking water system under my kitchen sink complete with faucet. It looks like this:




and here's a flow diagram minus one of the stages:



Depending on how the water tests go tomorrow, I was considering either adding a calcite filter on the blue line or possibly plumbing in the water before the osmosis stage! Haven't thought it through but does this sound doable?

[coffeeowl]

I have mine plumbed in using RO with a line carbon filter, dolomite mineralisator and a far-infra-red filter after the Osmosis Membrane. Drinking water is very good, coffee is excellent, hot water is excellent too. All rest of the setup is similar (3 stages prefiltration).

[JohnB]

CC tells you to shoot for 3g/50ppm to keep the machine boilers happy.

[wgaggl]

In anticipation of my Spaz delivery, I was just reviewing my water setup and reread the water faq http://www.big-rick.com/coffee/waterfaq.html and there appears to be a tradeoff between the ideal hardness of water for espresso taste and for keeping your machine scale free:

100 ppm = ideal coffee taste = scale
<10 ppm = reduced coffee taste = 0 scale

I couldn't make any sense of the aged pool testing kit I uncovered in storage so I plan on buying a kit to test my water tomorrow. I have recently installed (I wrote the check) a whole house water softening system and received free a 5 stage RO drinking water system under my kitchen sink complete with faucet. It looks like this:

Depending on how the water tests go tomorrow, I was considering either adding a calcite filter on the blue line or possibly plumbing in the water before the osmosis stage! Haven't thought it through but does this sound doable?

The WaterFAQ you mentioned will also tell you that at brewing temperature there's no scaling with 50ppm Hardness and 50ppm Alkalinity (also called 100 TDS - Totally Desolved Solubles). At steam temperature there's still minimal buildup with 50/50 water.
So that's the best choice.

Wolfgang

[JohnB]

The only downside to using the RO system to feed the machine I've heard about is that you need to add back in some minerals. If that is what #5 is doing in your diagram & you are happy with the taste then it should work fine if the hardness levels spec out.

[bugbus]

Thanks for the tips. Guess 50/50 is what I'm shooting for.. half and half water..

I was lucky to find an "Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater GH & KH Test Kit" mentioned in the water faq at the local aquarium shop and did some testing at home today.

Unprocessed water I got from a faucet from the backyard tested at: Alkalinity=179ppm and Hardness=268ppm

Softened water from the indoor tap tested at: Alkalinity=179ppm and Hardness= 18-35ppm

This appears normal since according to the water FAQ, ion exchange water softeners don't change the alkalinity.

Water from the RO faucet tested at: Alkalinity=35.8ppm and Hardness = <18ppm

Maybe instead of putting a remineralizer downflow from the RO and send it to the Spaz, I could put a T in the line before the RO membrane but after the prefilters and send that to the Spaz.