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"#p28523 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?

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"#p28546 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"#p28559 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.

@"JHCCoffee"#p28562 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"#p28559 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"#p28539 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"#p28565 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.

What Espresso Water Recipes Do You Prefer, When?

LMSC

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.

JHCCoffee

MWJB

You and the other members of this Forum are a very knowledgeable group indeed. Just sharing what I saw. Thanks again.

JHCCoffee

Rob1

Thanks Rob1.

Just curious. Why the magnesium hydroxide vs:

Epsom salt (MgSO4•7H2O) ie magnesium sulfate heptahydrate
Magnesium Chloride - MgCl2•6H2O (hexahydrate)

Any particular reason?

I have the 2 I listed above, but not magnesium hydroxide. Can I / should I use one of those in your recipe or would that be significantly inferior? Happy to order some magnesium hydroxide.

CoyoteOldMan

JHCCoffee Some people don’t like the taste of sulphate, and chlorides are potentially corrosive (esp. for copper).

Bear in mind that 1) hydroxides (and oxides) of Ca and Mg are strongly corrosive, and 2) you need to carbonate the water using a SodaStream or similar to dissolve them with the right chemistry to create alkalinity suitable for coffee making.

Most of the chemicals mentioned are cheap - buy some and experiment with cupping or Turkish coffee before you decide what you want to do with espresso.

Taste is personal; “inferior” or “superior” is a subjective judgement - the SCAA recommendations are as much about providing a consistent experience for the judges as they are about getting ‘good water for coffee’ and they almost completely disregard any ‘maintenance’ or ‘equipment life’ aspects. For professionals, tools are rarely lasting a lifetime, and maintenance is part of the job. For householders/consumers it’s a different story.

JHCCoffee

CoyoteOldMan

Interesting …. @Rob1 may weigh in when he has a moment.

For the moment, I’m using your suggestion of ZeroWater with 80 mg/litre of potassium bicarbonate and have ditched the Lelit filter. And I just started using the ZeroWater jug. I love that it’s giving me actual or close to 0 ppm TDS (measured 0 ppm on their TDS meter vs 1 ppm on another). And no more trips required to the water shop or storing glass gallon jugs. :)

Compared to the RO water that I was buying at 28 ppm. Darn water shop was pushing the limit on their filters and playing on peoples ignorance (including mine)!

MWJB

CoyoteOldMan the SCAA recommendations are as much about providing a consistent experience for the judges as they are about getting ‘good water for coffee’ and they almost completely disregard any ‘maintenance’ or ‘equipment life’ aspects.

There is no requirement for competition judging with the SCAA water specs, they are broad, objective targets and aimed at equipment life. The water at international coffee competitions (e.g. Melbourne & Rimini) often falls outside the SCAA, SCAE, Water for Coffee ideal zones. US ground water (_30mg/L Ca, 10mg/L Mg as ion) averages up a tiny bit softer than UK water (_45mg/L Ca, 12mg/L Mg), but US water can be way more diverse at the tails of the bell curve.

CoyoteOldMan

JHCCoffee How does the coffee taste?

JHCCoffee

CoyoteOldMan
Good point! That’s what its all about.

Unfortunately I: a) just started to try out a new basket (IMS 15g vs 18g previously), and b) ran out of my usual go to coffee, so will just today start dialing in a new bean. So I’ve been/will not yet be able to determine the taste impacts of my current vs prior water. Will just be using my new water (the 0 ppm TDS RO with 80 ppm potassium bicarbonate) and may experiment by adding magnesium of some kind.

But it is a good thing that I changed from my prior water. To refresh your memory my prior water was TWW powder in RO water (from that store that I am now boycotting) at a too high 28 ppm TDS. I just ran my prior water’s test results through a Langalier Index calculator, which showed negative 0.2 on their scale, which is clearly too corrosive. The Marzocco water app stated that this water was/is: “Balanced but pitting corrosion possible in presence of chlorides”.

Not sure whether the Lelit filter I ran this water through would have removed the chlorides or not. Fortunately I fully tested that water, discovered how bad it was and am now running much safer water through my machine.

CoyoteOldMan

MWJB aimed at equipment life.

With the specs of GH and KH they put out, I would frankly disagree they are, in a consumer environment.

MWJB

CoyoteOldMan At or close to 40mg/L alkalinity, 17 to 87mg/L total hardness, plus mentions of odour free, sodium content etc.

So basically water, just targeted around 40mg/L alkalinity.

I don’t understand the bit about consumer environment? They don’t sell water and publish the specs and many others as free to view.

CoyoteOldMan

MWJB No, sorry, I was unclear (and possibly misunderstanding things as well - certainly in terms of the ‘objectives’ of the standard: they put a strong emphasis on ‘taste’ and ‘coffee quality’, more so in the 2009 ‘Standard’ than in the much more extensive Handbook).

What I meant by ‘consumer’ is simply that people using an espresso machine as a professional tool (I hate using the word ‘barista’ - it doesn’t mean that!) generally have a greater understanding and willingness to perform necessary maintenance vs. the average consumer. Nothing to do with the commercial aspects of selling water (or coffee).

While SCA still refer to the SCAA 2009 standard in the 2018 “Water Quality Handbook” (latest I could find), they seem now to recommend a much larger range of GH:

Figure 7 summarizes existing recommendations (Leeb and Rogalla, 2006; Rao, 2008; Colonna-D. and Hendon 2015; SCAA, 2009) for optimal water composition for extraction from a sensory perspective. It is important to note that the recommended range for optimum hardness varies widely:

•Lowest suggested optimum is 51 ppm CaCO3 (2016 WorldBrewers Cup).

•Highest suggested optimum is 175 ppm CaCO3.(Colonna-Dashwood and Hendon’s Water for Coffee)

My personal opinion is that while the ‘old’ SCAA standard of GH 17 - 87 is relatively low-risk for scaling (though it will scale, in service boilers), a 51-175 range is decidedly on the high side, particularly for the average consumer (which is not the average forum user, never mind those participating in this discussion).

Rob1

JHCCoffee The filter almost certainly won’t catch chlorides. RO doesn’t completely remove chloride.

For your earlier question: I tried Magnesium sulphate and didn’t like it. Would not add chloride to water with my 316l steel boilers. Even below 10ppm chloride has been associated with stress corrosion cracking and pitting in 316l steel boilers when water is evaporated (as in a service boiler environment). The langelier index is only useful to 80c, much lower than a service boiler or even brew boiler. The formula on my spreadsheet is from Jim Schulman’s FAQ and is adjusted for a greater temp range….even so, get alkalinity to about 50mg/l and I don’t think there’s much to worry about by way of corrosion.

My short recipe is:

1.44g Magnesium Hydroxide in 500ml distilled water with 6g-12g CO2
10.96g Sodium Bicarb in 500ml distilled water.

2980ml Distilled water + 15ml Magnesium Bicarb concentrate and 5ml Sodium Bicarb concentrate gets you to

Hardness: 24.7mg/l
Alkalinity: 46.44mg/l

—

Or the longer version….

1.439679078g Mg(OH)2 in 500ml water with 2.172886238g CO2
5ml to 995ml = 6mg/l Mg (24.70773092mg/l as CaCO3) and 24.68627854mg/l alkalinity.

10.96254731g NaHCO3 in 500ml for the second concentrate.

5ml to 2995ml = 21.74953239mg/l Alkalinity and 10mg Sodium

—

The CO2 you need in practice is significantly more than calculated because you can’t get it all into the water and you can’t make it all react before it leaves. I use an Isi whipper with the CO2 cartridges.

You might want to make more or less concentrate and alter the amounts of brew water you’re making up….

MWJB

CoyoteOldMan My personal opinion is that while the ‘old’ SCAA standard of GH 17 - 87 is relatively low-risk for scaling (though it will scale, in service boilers), a 51-175 range is decidedly on the high side, particularly for the average consumer (which is not the average forum user, never mind those participating in this discussion).

Sorry, when you said “SCAA” spec I only considered the 2009 recommendations, as following recommendations were instigated by different bodies and authors.
SCAA still available here:
http://www.scaa.org/?d=water-standards&page=resources

Wellinger, Smrke, Yeretzian working for the the SCAE narrowed down the GH to a max 75mg/L at 40mg/L alkalinity to 110mg/L at 60mg/L alkalinity in 2016. Colonna-Dashwood and Hendon’s higher GH limits were cited by the SCAE (before joining up with the SCAA and forming SCA), but not a final recommendation by SCAA, SCAE, nor SCA.

JHCCoffee

Rob1

Thanks Rob1. All good suggestions. My chlorides and sulphates are now being returned to Amazon as we speak. Will find and order Magnesium Hydroxide instead.

Not sure how to deal with the CO2:

the ISI whippers are $100 to $200 Cdn, depending upon size. So abit expensive for me. I’d rather put that money towards an eventual Lelit Bianca, when I move my Elizabeth to the cottage. :)
If I did manage to find a used one, or an alternative, how do I measure and get exactly 6 grams of CO2 into the water? Are there 6 g cartridges? I take it that that I would dissolve all of the CO2 into the concentrate.
Is the CO2 simply being used to help dissolve the magnesium hydroxide, or is it part of the water chemistry?
If it is simply being used to dissolve the magnesium, could I use a SodaStream (as I have one)? However I cannot measure or control the amount of CO2 it dispenses. You simply press the lever until it buzzes. The water is then fully carbonated, with an undefined amount of CO2. Would that be a problem? It would be, if the chemistry needs a precise amount of CO2.

Sorry about my ignorance on this. Thanks for your help and patience.

JHCCoffee

Rob1

Just curious. With your formula (the magnesium and bicarb in ZeroWater), what PH and TDS are you getting?

JHCCoffee

Rob1 My short recipe is:

1.44g Magnesium Hydroxide in 500ml distilled water with 6g-12g CO2
10.96g Sodium Bicarb in 500ml distilled water.

2980ml Distilled water + 15ml Magnesium Bicarb concentrate and 5ml Sodium Bicarb concentrate gets you to

Hardness: 24.7mg/l
Alkalinity: 46.44mg/l

Hi Rob1. I been using the sodium bicarbonate recipe for a while, but thought I’d give your above recipe a try. I’m probably being abit thick, but I’m not quite clear on the recipe.

I just now made up a magnesium hydroxide concentrate with 1.44g Magnesium Hydroxide in 500ml zero water. I used my sodastream to add C02 to the water, and then added the magnesium hydroxide. And just for the heck of it, I put the concentrate through my sodastream a 2nd time. Its now sitting over night. Lets call this concentrate #1.

I presume that my next step is to make up a bottle of 10.96 sodium bicarbonate in 500 ml zero water. Lets call this concentrate #2.

So far so good.

Here’s where I get confused: Your post said:
“2980ml Distilled water + 15ml Magnesium Bicarb concentrate and 5ml Sodium Bicarb concentrate gets you to”

Does your recipe require two concentrates: #1 - the magnesium hydroxide concentrate, and #2 the sodium bicarbonate concentrate? Do I then mix 15 ml of concentrate #1 and 5 ml of concentrate #2, in 2980 ml of zero water, in order to get: Hardness: 24.7mg/l and Alkalinity: 46.44mg/l? Is this water then complete/ready?

BUT

It is your words: “15ml Magnesium Bicarb concentrate” that confuse my thick mind. Is this meant to be the combination of concentrates 1 and 2? Lets call this combined concentrate “the 1&2 combo”. And am I then to put this concoction in 2,970 ml of water, to which I would add a further 5 ml of “sodium bicarbonate concentrate”, which I presume is more of concentrate #2 (again).

Sorry to be muddled about this.

Thanks for your help, Rob1.

Rob1

What you use is really up to you, why not try magnesium sulphate and see if you like it? Or just try sodium or potassium bicarb alone?

You can use the soda stream. To be honest I’m not sure if carbonating before or after the magnesium hydroxide is added is best. You don’t want any bubbles left in the water when you’re using the concentrate so shake it, stir it or whatever, just get the excess CO2 out once all of the magnesium hydroxide is dissolved. You might have to carbonate more than once.

There’s nothing magic about my recipe, you’ll still have to flush the service boiler and refill with “softer” water, which in my case is just distilled…

JHCCoffee

Rob1

Thanks Rob1 !

I might be wrong, but I understand that with the Lelit Elizabeth I cannot independently flush the steam or brew boilers. To flush, you run the hot water wand until it stops running. What you end up with (in your measuring cup or beaker) is the full contents of the brew boiler, followed by the contents of the steam boiler.

Both are served by the same water supply. So if I purge using ZeroWater or distilled water, I end up with that new water in both the brew and steam boilers, which would then not be the water that I want to permanently have in my boilers or brew with. So I would then have to purge a second time with my actual water recipe (inclusive of the potassium bicarb and the magnesium hydroxide).

All good. If I end up liking adding the magnesium and it is better/safer to initially purge with soft water, such as ZeroWater, and then repurge with my water recipe (bicarb and magnesium) then I will just do that.

So question: do I need to do the above described double (twice) purge, to avoid scale.

Rob1

No, I would only use bicarb in a small boiler. My recipe is fine below 135c but the Elizabeth’s service boiler can (and probably does out of neccesity? run hotter). You’d not be able to effectively flush and there’s no point flushing with distilled and then filling with remineralised.

JHCCoffee

Rob1

Thanks Rob!

I have the service boiler set to 135 C. I could dial it back to 130 C.

And yes, I have heard that the service boiler never quite flushes completely, though I suppose that the “origonal” water is eventually replaced or diluted through repeated flushing.

We want to avoid scaling and corrosion. However if adding magnesium improves flavour, I would consider doing that as long as I can avoid scaling and corrosion (pitting).

So, bottom line, would using your formula (ie adding the magnesium to the potassium bicarbonate) be safe, if we run the service boiler at say 130 or 135 C and flush regularly (say once every 2 weeks?) ??

Or too risky and just use the bicarb?

Rob1

No, two weeks wouldn’t be often enough. Bicarb only. Alternatively try alkalinity from non carbonate sources.

JHCCoffee

Rob1 Alternatively, try alkalinity from non-carbonate sources.

Any recommendations on this?

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