wideawake wrote:I'm gonna go with Occam's razor on this. Have you ever been able to pull a shot that you thought wasn't underextracted, on anybody's machine, anywhere?

I'm not sure what you're suggesting but to answer your question, I haven't fully tried different water in my machine That would require draining the boiler which I don't really want to do since I'm getting a new machine next week. However, I will be running the new machine on bottled Volvic water. I'm not a water expert by any means but am getting better educated every day. The coffees I'm trying to pull are highly acidic, lightly roasted SO's. I can easily pull darker roasted blends and get sufficient extraction yields. If I were happy drinking classic Italian style roasts, I would be fine. There also is a downside to liking lightly roasted coffees, they can be underdeveloped by the roaster. To combat that possibility, I bought beans from many different high end roasters and still could not get higher than 17.5% extraction yield.

Maybe my technique is to blame, I'm not above accepting that possibility. The reason I don't believe that is the case is that the equipment I'm using is so forgiving and easy to work with, I think you'd have to be way off to pull bad shots. Also, the fact that I get such consistent results with every shot makes that possibility less likely.

Basically it comes down to the experiment that I did with letting ground espresso sit in brew water out of my brew group for four minutes and only getting roughly 20% extraction yield. According to people much more educated than me, that showed my water to have problems. What those problems are, will probably be much more complicated than just "soft water".

Mitch,

I think what wideawake is suggesting isn't to try to use bottled water in you Linea. He advised you to repeat the experiment where you steeped espresso-ground beans in your tap water, but use bottled water instead (the Volvic water you mentioned is the one to use if that's what you plan to use in your new machine.)

The point of the experiment is to make sure you can get the expected over extraction from the beans you are testing if you eliminate your primary suspect: your water. You'll also find out if whatever bottled water you use is going to make any difference when put in a machine, either your Linea or the new machine.

It's a cheap and simple experiment that will be highly informative.

However, I will be running the new machine on bottled Volvic water.

Mitch, you need a field trip to DC - it's on sale for $1/liter as I type.

The specs on Volvic are as follows (e-mail from Volvic themselves):

The Mineral Composition of Volvic Natural Spring Water in mg/liter is as follows:

Calcium: 11.5 mg/L
Magnesium: 8 mg/L
Sodium: 11.6 mg/L
Potassium: 6.2 mg/L
Bicarbonates: 71 mg/L
Sulfates: 8.1 mg/L
Chlorides: 13.5 mg/L
Nitrate (N): 1.4 mg/L
Silica: 31.7 mg/L
Fluoride: 0.2 mg/L
Lead: not detected
Arsenic: not detected
Copper: not detected
Zinc: not detected

Neutrally Balanced pH = 7.0

Peppersass wrote:Mitch,

I think what wideawake is suggesting isn't to try to use bottled water in you Linea. He advised you to repeat the experiment where you steeped espresso-ground beans in your tap water, but use bottled water instead (the Volvic water you mentioned is the one to use if that's what you plan to use in your new machine.)

The point of the experiment is to make sure you can get the expected over extraction from the beans you are testing if you eliminate your primary suspect: your water. You'll also find out if whatever bottled water you use is going to make any difference when put in a machine, either your Linea or the new machine.

It's a cheap and simple experiment that will be highly informative.

Ah yes, I get it now. I will try that as soon as I get home Sunday. It certainly is cheap and easy.

Eric, I saw the specs too. I was going on the advice that it represents good water to brew with. Do you agree? It would be easy enough to run bottled water (although I wish Volvic came in 5 gallon jugs).