Hello Guys,
Planning to get Lelit Elizabeth and digging through all issues and recommendations.
So the question is: if am gonna use bottled water with good quality ( hardness 65/ pH 7/ chloride 45ppm/ calcium 17ppm/ magnesium 6ppm/ tds 115). So do i need a water filter in the machine that am gonna buy? Or it’s better not to use it?
Does the filter eleminate necessary salts for a good coffee?
Water filter that i mean is the lelit tank filter.
Thanks
Ibrahim
Welcome to the forum…. @Rob1 is our water expert…but from my perspective. The Lelit filter will reduce scaling . By how much (from new to old) and for how long probable depends on your current water
Ibrahim Some people think it does, others think it doesn’t? You can find a good bottled water that won’t scale due to composition, and perhaps not use the in tank filter at all.
Hardness looks a little high, do you know the bicarbonate or alkalinity concentration? Chlorides are above LM recommended spec for boiler safety, which is quite a generous limit imo.
You’ll need to raise alkalinity to about 40mg/l, maybe more. Worth saying you might get away with less as plenty of people use ashbeck and enoy it. At 40mg/l it’ll be slightly scale forming at service boiler temps (e.g 125c) due to the hardness present if the alkalinity comes from bicarbonate sources e.g. sodium bicarb, which is most commonly used to remineralise water by people using RO and DI water.
It’s far from ideal water for coffee as it is. You don’t really need hardness, alkalinity will act as a buffer and reduce perceived acidity. If it is too low you can get sour coffee and the water can be quite aggressive for boilers. You have almost no alkalinity as it is. So in answer to your question the filter won’t eliminate necessary salts for good coffee, it’ll replace hardness ions of Ca and Mg with Na and leave the negligible bicarbonate unaltered. At brew boiler temps it’ll be fine even up to 115c with alkalinity added up to 40mg/l even if you have a 20c offset to get 95c at the group….which you probably won’t? The problem would be in the service boiler which you’ll need to descale. Dave will know more about the Elizabeth specifically and how prone it is to problems from scaling and whether or not you even can just descale the service boiler as I’m not sure with the way the Elizabeth works.
I wouldn’t use this water in a 316 or 316l steel boiler though due to high chlorides, which a filter will not remove. Though you could use a filter to remove hardness and add alkalinity yourself before or after filtration. Using a filter is really at odds with using bottled water though.
Rob1 That’s why Dave called you the water expert! Only who works in water can know that much.
Thanks a lot man. In this case I’ll be looking for another alternative for this brand. Limited choices here! And tap water is a desalinated sea water, am getting residues even with filteration.
I’ll update you and thanks 👍
Hi, forgive me if this has been answered before, but i am a new member and still finding my way around! I have just purchased a Lelit Elizabeth, and I believe it is possible to ‘regenerate’ the in line water filter using salt much like a household water softener, is this feasible?
My other question is I have a ‘drinking water’ tap with an ‘Anti scale’ filter which keeps the kettle pretty scale free. I checked the hardness of the water from this with a test strip, and it came back as hard! I contacted the manufacturer, who said that was normal as the calcium was not removed from the water, but rendered inactive by the filter. Not sure if this would be OK for my machine or not?
I know virtually nothing about filters but it sounds like your filter works with a chelating agent of some kind. Or maybe it’s a TAC filter? Whether or not it’s effective at high temps (e.g. when the water is heated beyond 100c) and whether or not it’s safe for boilers, I have no idea. Whether or not it’s good for brewing coffee with, again, no idea.
Thanks I have done a bit more research, and I think these filters use Anoin resin, and work in a similar fashion to the cationic in tank filters such as Lelit use. I have used the filtered drinking water in the tank of my Elizabeth hich also has an in tank softener. So far the water is reading as soft using test strips, so I hope all is good!
Alkalinity is about 10mg/l. It is a measure of the capacity of water to neutralise acid. You’re looking for bicarbonate and carbonate to determine alkalinity generally, but you’re really looking for anything that can remove H+ ions from the water. The water is really high in sulphates…not sure how much they contribute to alkalinity. You may want to check with a test kit.
Hardness is just less than 90m/l.
Thanks Rob. In this case I’ll try to find another solution, which third wave water with distilled water and check if it’s ok.
And this case what do you think about third wave water? Does it cause scale if I used their espresso range formula? In lelit bianca (still on the way)
Appreciated and thanks 👍
Remineralising distilled is probably a good route.
I don’t use third wave water. They list their ingredients and you can just make the mix yourself if you want. If I recall they use Calcium Citrate, Magnesium sulfate, Sodium chloride and Potassium Bicarboante….but I’m not sure. They claim that you can’t get scale, which would be true if all alkalinity came from citrates. I’d need figures to say any more, but if there’s hardness from Calcium or Magnesium together with bicarbonate then you’ll get scale - it just depends at what temp, and how long you can use a service boiler until you’ve got to refresh to water in the boiler.
Put it this way, water is going to be either corrosive or scale forming.
An espresso machine runs at a variety of temperatures. From room temp, to 105c in one boiler (approx) to approx 125c in another. It’s not possible to feed a machine with water that will be balanced across all temps. So you can have water that is neither scale forming or corrosive at 105c, but scale forming at 125c. Or you can have water that will be neither corrosive or scale forming at 125c, but corrosive at 105c. It would be a bit foolish to try and supply a service boiler with such water as you’d have to completely empty it out and refill every day, so you’re better off either using water that lacks hardness and is simply corrosive across the whole machine, or using water that is balanced in the brew boiler but scales in the service boiler - meaning you have to descale it (not usually an issue, it’s the brew boiler that’s a pita).
Also worth noting that ‘corrosive’ is used loosely. It’s according to the Langelier index, and I’m not sure it is entirely appropriate to use it when talking about water remineralised to have alkalinity to stop it from becoming acidic. So you could do what I and others have done or still do and that’s remineralise distilled with sodium bicarbonate. Or you could try adding some hardness in and keep an eye on scale in the service boiler….up to you. OR you could go for Hardness and alkalinity from non-bicarbonate sources (which TWW may do).
