Hi All

I searched this Forum for “water recipe” and did not have significant success. Searching for “water” has many (many) hits, but they cover a wide variety of topics. So at the risk of being repetitive, may I ask:

What specific water recipe or recipes do you use for your espresso coffee? If more than one, which recipe in which situation?

For each recipe may I ask:

What specific compounds do you use (how many mg of x in 1 litre of RO water)?

When do you use this recipe? (for which beans or roasts)?

What is its impact on taste? Please be specific.

What is its impact on extraction yield?

What is its impact on scaling? On corrosion?

PS Any particular suggestions for water recipes that work well for decaf?

What’s 10% RO?

Most people will use one recipe. It’s not easy to change water in espresso machines with brew boilers, people who use an HX or something that doesn’t have boilers like the flare may do it easily.

    Rob1

    Thanks Rob1. Good point. By 10% RO I meant RO water at 10% TDS. In other words, water that is almost as pure as distilled water. Anyway I edited that out, to just refer to RO water.

    And so …. what’s your latest water recipe preference?

    • Rob1 replied to this.

        Changes in water chemistry have no effect on extraction yield, only flavour and scaling/corrosion potential.

        If the coffee has muted acidity drop the alkalinity, if it is overly bright, try more alkalinity (assuming nominal extraction & no other obvious faults.)

        Honesty, I would finalise your water then spend much more time & effort on the beans, grind & ratio, (Unless of course you are starting a business remineralising water for espresso?)

          MWJB

          Thanks for the good comments and suggestions, MWJB.

          If you do not mind sharing, what water base and additives recipe do you use ? What do you like about it?

          As an FYI, I read (in Barista Hustle) that (all other factors being equal), increases in magnesium cause increased extraction. I’ll post the BH quote in a moment.

              JHCCoffee

              Correction: Increases in water hardness produce increases in extraction. A couple of recipes that I saw on BH targeted somewhat greater hardness, for use in espresso.

                “Pretty Hard Water: 35.1 g buffer 126.1 g magnesium concentrate 838.9 g distilled/ultrapure water This recipe begins the ascent in water ‘hardness’, probably better suited to espresso. It is also a good choice of water for filter coffee recipes that require a very short contact time. This is starting to grab a lot out from the coffee, so brew recipes would need need to either slow down or speed up the brew time, via grind adjustments, and shorten or increase your beverage weight. Dependent on the roast, somewhere along those two spectra you’ll find something tasty.”

                And this:

                Hard AF Water 
                45.2 g buffer
                176.8 g magnesium concentrate
                778.0 g distilled/ultrapure water
                This recipe pushes the mineral level to a point where                 you’re basically cranking the amp up to 11. Your brew parameters from the earlier water recipes would need to change a lot here.

                • LMSC replied to this.

                  JHCCoffee We thought 2 days ago, if the memory serves right, you will not be using pure RO and instead get ZeroWater and re-mineralise? Has there been a change in thinking?

                  https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/d/1105-accurate-water-testing-kits/52

                  Please get a view of the GH and KH of your pure RO first. You can then top up with bicarbonate and go from there. I would try reading some of the water threads posted on this forum.

                      JHCCoffee Don’t bother posting the BH info on hardness & EY, it is wrong.

                      I like coffee, I like the coffee to drive the flavour of the drink. I focus on this, whilst using water within the recommendations for good boiler water.

                      At the moment I use a BWT jug because in one pass I get suitable water, with no remineralisation. Previously, I remineralised by mixing 0TDS water with tap water.

                          JHCCoffee

                          As MWJB has said already, hardness has no effect on extraction. There’s no evidence that water with a bit of calcium or magnesium extract more from coffee than distilled water. Blind taste tests are wildly inconsistent too, with the results of some showing coffee made with distilled water tasting best, calcium muddling flavours but tasting creamy, others showing calcium being the best and fruity, others showing magnesium being sweetest and most fruity and others still saying magnesium makes coffee too bright…you get the idea. In terms of EY there’s no notable difference and tests using gas chromatography show no significant difference.

                          The biggest factor affecting flavour is alkalinity. Hardness will affect how the water tastes. People report calcium gives water a creamier mouth feel, in my experience magnesium imparts a little sweetness. This is compared to distilled with bicarbonate only added. My espresso with magnesium and bicarb is a little sweeter than just bicarb but having not done side by side tests I cannot say for sure. I just use tap water to brew immersion or syphon as it is fairly ideal, so no comparisons outside of espresso either.

                          I don’t have my recipe to hand but I use Magnesium hydroxide in carbonated water to get a concentrate of Magnesium bicarbonate, and another concentrate that will give me Sodium Bicarb to get 10mg/l Sodium. The final brew water has about 45mg/l alkalinity from bicarb and 25mg/l Magnesium as CaCO3.

                          Using water with about 50mg/l alkalinity is a good bet and will help prevent corrosion. Adding hardness means you will get scale in a service boiler eventually without some kind of flushing routines. You might want to get an alkalinity and hardness that doesn’t scale in the brew boiler (hard to descale) but be happy with descaling the service boiler, or you might want to avoid any maintenance in which case just use bicarb.

                              LMSC

                              Thanks LMSC. I just bought a ZeroWater filter, just delivered today, and will soon start using it. I just read that it reduces TDS by 99.6%, so the TDS of the end result will depend upon the TDS of your tap water. So probably more like 1% TDS. Will then remineralize it, using an appropriate water recipe.

                                  Rob1

                                  Thanks Rob1. Most appreciated!

                                  When you have a spare moment, might you be so kind as to provide the recipe ingredients and measures. Thanks again.

                                    JHCCoffee it reduces TDS by 99.6%, so the TDS of the end result will depend upon the TDS of your tap water. So probably more like 1% TDS.

                                    Nope - if it reduces TDS by 99.6% (which is a kind of interesting statement by itself - see below), then water with 215 ppm TDS (as yours in Toronto) will end up with 0.4% of those, i.e. less than 1 ppm TDS. 1% TDS would mean 10,000 mg/l, which is technically a brine (sea water is about 40 grams/litre).

                                    FWIW, using the ‘ZeroWater’ TDS meter (of which I have checked calibration between 50 and 250 mg/l NaCl), my tap water containing 350-400 ppm of dissolved minerals (according to the Water Authority analysis) goes down to “0 TDS” (i.e. 0 ions) without any problem.

                                    The reason why I’m saying it’s an interesting statement is that it makes all sorts of assumptions about what constitutes “total dissolved solids”. A ZeroWater filter has a number of filters to catch different types of stuff; not all have the same efficiency/effectiveness at catching what they are supposed to be catching. The one thing that is reasonably true is that ions dissolved in water (and thus Ca and Mg soluble compounds - read “stuff that can cause scaling”) will be trapped.

                                        CoyoteOldMan

                                        Thanks CoyoteOldMan! I stand technically corrected. You do know your chemistry. 🙇‍♂️

                                        And so, back to the theme of the post: What do you add to your ZeroWater for your preferred recipe or recipes? How much of what? To get what chemistry result? How does it taste?

                                            MWJB

                                            MWJB Don’t bother posting the BH info on hardness & EY, it is wrong.

                                            Just curious. What’s is BH flawed about?

                                            • MWJB replied to this.

                                                  JHCCoffee I have experimented a bit - though the only “almost side-to-side” experiments I ran have been with Turkish coffee; brewing espresso side-to-side requires multiple (identical) machines… which I don’t have

                                                  I have reached the conclusion that - while Ca and Mg change the flavour a bit, and for the better - there is not enough positive change in it for me to put up with the fuss of descaling the espresso machine regularly. I am using potassium bicarbonate, 80 mg/l, with medium/dark roasted beans.

                                                  If I were to move to lighter roasts, I would probably increase the amount of bicarbonate up to double, but I haven’t tried this - I have no acidic or bitter notes in the coffees I drink if I brew at the correct temperature.

                                                      JHCCoffee The assertion that water hardness affects EY, It doesn’t, I have tested it so have the scientists at Zurich university, it has not been observed.

                                                      Also the theory that water only penetrates coffee to 100um, this is also known to be incorrect (since 1992) and BH’s measurement of “um” is suspect in terms of common understanding because they used a Kruve rather than ASTM sieves, which give differing results.

                                                        Fyi, a fellow by the name of Jim Schulman wrote this: [Water FAQ] (https://web.archive.org/web/20080526072324/http://www.big-rick.com/coffee/waterfaq.html)

                                                        from which I extracted this long piece of text (sorry!):

                                                        _Boiler Flushing

                                                        Obviously, no one in their right minds would want to go through the hassle of doing a boiler descaling at monthly or bimonthly intervals. Fortunately, one can reduce the descaling requirement to virtually nothing, even when running the 90 mg/l hardness, 50 mg/l alkalinity water best for coffee by using this trick.

                                                        If the boiler autofill only runs to replenish water lost by steaming, it only amounts to a few ounces per day. Suppose the water in the boiler starts out very soft. Then these small additions of moderately hard water won’t bring it to scaling levels for at least a week or so.

                                                        So once a week, put very soft water into your tank and flush the boiler with it until the water has been softened down. The flushing technique is the same as that described in the descaling section. Then put your regular nuetral to moderately hard espresso water back in and enjoy your shots with complete confidence. If you regularly use boiler water for Americanos, etc., or do a lot of steaming, adjust the frequency of soft water flushing to match [see section 1.7]. If this is impossible due to very high use or boiler inaccessability, you will have to go with a softer non-scaling water.

                                                        Straight RO can be used for this flushing since enough minerals will generally remain to operate the autofill sensor. If the pump doesn’t go off due to low minerals, simply shut the machine and replace the RO water with the regular water. It will only take a few seconds of pumping to raise the mineral content enough to deactivate the autofill. Alternatively, add 5% to 10% tap water to make it conductive enough.

                                                        Even if boiler safe water is used, the boiler needs to be flushed occasionally. The frequency can be calculated using the data in section 1.

                                                        If these procedures are followed, there’s technically no need to descale the boiler at all. Nevertheless, an annual or biannual descaling is wise to pick up any stray scale that may have formed due to forgetfullness._

                                                          JHCCoffee Fyi, a fellow by the name of Jim Schulman wrote this: [Water FAQ]

                                                          We already know this, Schulman’s FAQ (2002) was long before Water for Coffee book (2015), SCAA (2012), SCAE water recommendations, it was also cited in Wellinger, Smrke & Yeretzian’s 2016 SCAE water report.

                                                              JHCCoffee Most of us keep it simple to manage the scaling risks.

                                                              • Top up the distilled, RO, ZeroWater with suitable bicarb
                                                              • Draw a small cup after every steam or a chooses frequency depending on the use and/or carry out a full boiler flush every ⅘ weeks.