New machine time!

Inspector

It is indeed.

Waitforme

Great choice 👍

The extra cost of the Bianca will just disappear over the many years you’ll own it.

Verion

Penance I had briefly an Osmio, but it had a life of its own from unboxing. Turned itself off in the middle of pouring water but the water kept going. Sent it back to be repaired and when it came back, the thing still had a life of its own and kept turning itself on and off, so I got a refund. If you get one, once you commission it with about 10litres of tap water, it’s then a case of filling up the coffee machines water reservoir with the RO water.

In the meantime, I’m borrowing my neighbours Barista Hustle SCA water recipe which is working well. Tastes no different to the water I manage to tease out of the Osmio. Easy to make the recipe with bicarbonate of soda (from the baking aisle and some food grade epsom salt). Then you make it with a ZeroWater filter jug.

Or Waitrose Lockhills which I used to commission my Minima. Cheap enough and if you catch all the water in a suitable jug, pour it all back into the Lockhills bottle and use it for watering plants once cool/cold.

Penance

Verion I think i am edging towards the zero jug at the moment, even if just as an interim. It seems the easiest way to get started with little outlay while i am trying to get my head round the whole water thing.

Ernie1

Take this with a pinch of salt as I haven’t got my head around water science either but as an interim solution, I’ve always just used bottled. Waitrose Lockhills is 70p for 2l and I use two a week, so about a fiver a month. I typically order 3 packs with our grocery shop and then not worry about it for 3 months.

The environmental aspect bothers me a bit but the bottle and cap are recyclable.

LM actually recommend using bottled (Acqua Panna). I suspect there’s a business relationship behind that as well as functional, but I’m sure they wouldn’t recommend it if it led to scores of angry LM customers with scaled-up machines.

The consensus seems to be that bottled water will still scale but the question I have is how long will that scale take to become a problem that needs descaling if using exclusively Lockhills/Volvic? If it’s 10 years+, then I’m ok with that. But if it’s likely to cause issues after say 18-months then I’ll reconsider RO.

Penance

Ernie1 Thanks, That is quite a reasonable cost. I’ll give that a go as its cheap and easy.
I may get a zero jug anyway as our Britta is way past its best and i can get a 20% discount buying direct.

Dusk

I also use Lockhills, it’s not too expensive as I use about 2L a week. It’s a bit silly that the 5L bottle costs more per litre than the 4×2L bottles so it’s costs more to use less plastic. I’ve also looked at the zero water jug etc but as I’m in a hard water area I’d be changing filters very regularly so I don’t think it would end up any better than the bottles

Ernie1

Dusk

I’m glad you said that, I could get away with using probably 2L also but I wasn’t sure how long a bottle should be opened for. I suppose it doesn’t matter much if it’s in the fridge.

SurreyAlan

My zero jug is back in the garage and I’ve returned to Lockhills, zero water really changed the taste and it still didn’t taste right after adding the soda. Think some use BWT filters but there seems to be a bit of choice of filters there and I wouldn’t be sure which one to use so Lockhills seemed the easiest choice.

MediumRoastSteam

SurreyAlan - interesting. I’m curious to know what did you taste when you changed to the ZeroWater. Was the coffee really bright/acidic?

Ps: been there done that, so I’m really curious! 😊

SurreyAlan

My opinions on taste are pretty worthless, though I keep bees I think honey tastes like cough mixture, beer and wine are awful and expensive beans are totally wasted on me, I enjoy the cheap stuff. That said zerowater tasted dry as did the coffee made with it, just wasn’t refreshing. When I made up the concoction to add it didn’t really improve and in tastings to compare Lockhills, Ashbeck and tapwater (which here comes from boreholes filtered by chalk so hasn’t been round 10 Londoners first) had zero as the water I wouldn’t want to drink. In another post someone said Lockhills and ashbeck mixed might be the best of the bottled and as I shop in both by coincidence that’s what I do.

MediumRoastSteam

SurreyAlan - thank you. I remember when I switched from Ashbeck/Lockhills to distilled remineralised with sodium bicarbonate, the coffee tasted super bright to me. I remember then talking to DavecUK about this, and he told me something along the lines of “you’d surprised how fast your tastebuds adapt to taste” or something along those lines. And it was so true. Maybe it was just the “shock”, but a couple of coffees later coffee just tasted normal to me. My Elizabeth never had anything but distilled water with bicarbonate, probably he reason it’s never been descaled after 2.5 years.

At the end of the day, we only live once. So if Ashbeck or Lockhills tastes better, then so be it!

Enjoy!

CoyoteOldMan

MediumRoastSteam we only live once

That is true; the question is “how many times do we descale?” 😁

thewelshvet

My experience was similar. I’ve gone down the distilled remineralised route and it did taste strange to begin with, but I no longer notice it and the coffee is great. A distiller is cheap too.

DavecUK

CoyoteOldMan Never

MediumRoastSteam

DavecUK ditto!

Penance

My Bianca is being delivered on Monday so I’ve no time to get any form of home filtration sorted. I’m going to pop to Tesco and Waitrose and grab a few bottles of each.
Still deciding on what to do long term but the Zero jug is very tempting as a means to trial and learn about remineralising.

To be honest, old radiator water would be better than Bristol tap water!

MediumRoastSteam

Penance you’ll be fine. But consider a ZeroWater jug, a distiller or an Osmio Zero. There’s also the Schuma, but haven’t seen a review yet.

Penance

MediumRoastSteam I’m going to order a zero jug. The bottled water is to see my through till that arrives.

Cuprajake

dont forget you’ll need to flush the machine, so buy more than you need haha

MediumRoastSteam

Penance - I have a distiller. With the current electricity prices, it’s not the cheapest thing to run, but it still breaks even with the Zero jug in a hard water area. Also my usage is 2L per week, so the Zero water is overkill. We happily drink tap water here.

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