Just made up the first batch of water after running out of Ashbeck. I ended up following the barista hustle recipe 4 using the calculations in the Direct Dosing Recipe Picker & Calculator which seems to be created by people from the EAF discord forum. Awesome spreadsheet I must say, I hope the calculations are correct!
I made it up using direct dosing in to my old 5l ashbeck bottle using baking soda and epsom salts, thus these were the options I had from that spreadsheet:
I choose the Barista Hustle 4 recipe because actually, of all the recipes it was the only one that fell within La Marzocco’s spec:
It’s probably being over the top to ensure I meet their spec, but hey… they do say it would invalidate your warranty!
All seemed fairly easy, a bit of a faff measuring the ingredients, and it sucks with the zero water jug to have to fill and empty 3 times but I’ll get used to it I think.
I ran enough through the service and brew boiler to purge them. Trying a coffee with it now, seems nice enough.
Apparently the TDS (according to ChatGPT because I’m no good at working all this out yet) should be 134 ppm and the zero water meter read 105 (still within LM spec anyway), ChatGPT informs me that my TDS meter is probably not very good.