Both Tesco Ashbeck & Waitrose Essentials Lockhills are Cumbrian water from Armathwaite. At some point in the past it was softer/lower pH/lower alkalinity.
Water filter importance when using bottled water
It’s definitely a more recent thing, they weren’t always the same
Lockhills same as Ashbeck I think
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I found this one from Sainsbury’s preferable to Ashbeck for espresso. 
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
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JimmyP - you have a Flair - so you should be good. I wouldn’t put that into the boiler of my coffee machine. It would be a white rock in no time. 😊
Chase Spring is also very high in alkalinity, so tends to mute acidity and make coffee chewier in body, it’s pretty typical of hard UK tap water.
IIRC they show the composition of it per 100ml when most others do it per litre so at first glance it looks low scale until you realise you need to multiply by 10 to compare!
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MWJB To be fair I prefer Chase Spring to Ashbeck because it does tend to balance the acidity of the lighter roasts I enjoy for espresso, but I’m not sure it’s highly alkaline with ph7? And I’m also not sure one can regard uk hard tap water as uniform? Chase spring contains a small fraction of the minerals I have in my tap water at home.
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
MediumRoastSteam I’m surprised. So you would use a much lower mineral content? What would that be?
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
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JimmyP - I use ZeroWater filter and remineralise with Potassium Bicarbonate at a concentration of 100mg/L. My machine still behaves and sounds like new - despite being over 4 years old.
If you had used Chase Springs on a dual boiler machine… the likelihood is that it wouldn’t be working by now.
MediumRoastSteam Ok, I’m surprised it makes that much of a difference, but for me it’s another reason to love the Flair.
I reckon it’s about eight months since I did any maintenance 😅👍
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
JimmyP ‘Alkalinity’, is what they used to call ‘Karbonate hardness’ (KH), or temporary hardness. It’s basically the bicarbonate value in mg/L multiplied by 0.8 to give the value as CaCO3 (this is the scale used widely in the water industry).
It’s not directly relatable to the pH (hydrogen ion).
I didn’t say UK tap water was uniform, ground water is very widely varied, but the areas of soft water tend to be in the West & (igneous rock) & more sparsely populated. Chase spring is roughly around the average at 140mg/L total hardness, 120mg/L alkalinity, many folk (like me) will have water this hard, or harder, coming out of their tap.
JimmyP but for me it’s another reason to love the Flair
I agree. I keep thinking of having a Flair + Nanofoamer setup. But I watch videos… and see the routine. The shortcomings…. I think I’m better where I am - for now at least.
But I get your point: I wish I could just make espresso with the water from my kitchen tap.
MWJB Chase spring is roughly around the average at 140mg/L total hardness, 120mg/L alkalinity, many folk (like me) will have water this hard, or harder, coming out of their tap.
Water out of my tap is 310ppm. 😱😱😱 - is this the same as mg/L?
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MediumRoastSteam ppm stands for parts per million, which is the same as mg/L as ion (a million milligrams in a litre/kg). There are multiplication factors for the calcium carbonate scale, so things tend to drift there. Plus, if you’re using a conductive TDS tester, it’s not measuring hardness, nor alkalinity, it’s measuring everything in the water organic & non organic, converted from a conductivity scale…of which there are three different ones in common use.
For example my tap water measures 312ppm (or mg/L) TDS using my conductive TDS meter.
It has 104mg/L Calcium as ion, almost no magnesium, giving 260mg/L total hardness as CaCO3.
230mg/L bicarbonate, which converts to 190mg/L alkalinity CaCO3.
Water bottle labels don’t ever seem to be ‘as CaCO3’, mains supply reports usually are, but you can sometimes get the ‘as ion’ values from an in depth report. Mains suppliers almost never give TDS in ppm/mg/L, more commonly giving conductivity in ‘us/cm’ (whereas water bottles state TDS as ‘dry residue’ after dehydration, in mg/L - Chase Spring is 220mg/L, or ppm).
So it’s simple…once you know which scale and which parameter people are talking about. :-)
I didn’t even get into degrees Clarke, German, or French…maybe another time, after people’s eyes have stopped glazing over…:-)
MWJB For example my tap water measures 312ppm (or mg/L) TDS using my conductive TDS meter.
It has 104mg/L Calcium as ion, almost no magnesium, giving 260mg/L total hardness as CaCO3.
For my tap water, My tds meter reads 180ppm. Hardness (using a drop kit) measures 310ppm. I never understood how that’s even possible….
MediumRoastSteam I’m interested in your perceived shortcomings of the Flair? There’s a few from my point of view, but also advantages compared with traditional espresso machines 🙂
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.
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JimmyP - I Watch videos and find that temp stability is not its forte. Also the whole warm up routine… is not for me. And it doesn’t steam. 😊
Ps: I watched the videos. I have no interest in looking them up again. 😊
MWJB Ok, I didn’t realise there was a difference between alkanility and ph.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the difference re espresso and flavour?
I do know that Chase spring is much softer than filtered tap water where I live (east Kent), but I have only used basic type filters.
Flair 58, Mahlkonig EK43, Kinu M47, 1zpresso ZP6.