Yeah, I remember using the Hach test kits when I had a salt water fish tank and lived in LA. Great test kits. Liquid rock water down there....

Mark

Peppersass wrote:The hardness kit is: 145300 Hardness (Total) Test Kit, Model 5-B, Drop Count Titration, 1-30 gpg, 100 tests
The alkalinity kit is: 2444301 Alkalinity Test Kit, Model AL-AP, Drop Count Titration, 100 tests

Thanks for your offer to test my water, Dick, but I had a LOT more testing than you'd want to keep track of in mind. Instead, I shelled out the cash for the Hach tests as well. I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of my Salifert vs. Hach test kits yet, but today I had a chance to test my water using the Hach tests.

Read my results here. The link is to the same Google doc as I was using before, but I've added a new sheet with new data. I have chosen to name the sheets according to the date of the testing, so make sure you're looking at October 29th's sheet.

Some observations: In general, it appears that my Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Tests from before were probably inaccurate. Presumably as the test solution evaporates, the test values become artificially deflated, because each drop I assume) increases in its strength--meaning fewer drops to change color for the same sample. That's just my guess. However, the KH test seems like it may have stayed pretty accurate. The GH test results are way off--that or the Claris has "broken in" and is behaving differently on GH (allowing more hardness through).

The Hach test is a low-range test where each drop is the equivalent of 5 ppm rather than ~17 ppm, meaning it's much more fine-grained, without halving the number of tests you get.

Other interesting data... Note that in the last 6 weeks the TDS of my inlet water has dropped by ~50ppm TTDS. It's hard to tell the comparative makeup of the water, though since I tested salt-based ion exchange water from last month (harvested and stored before switching to Claris), It seems safe to say that the inlet alkalinity is identical--it registered as 100 ppm with the Hach test the same as my lower-TDS water from today.

The Hach test indicates that the Claris filter allows a lot more GH through than I'd previously thought, making its numbers look a lot more like 'ideal' water (~100 ppm mineral hardness, 50 ppm alkalinity) in terms of mineral hardness/alkalinity ratio. That's encouraging to me.

One cool advantage of the Hach test kit over the Aquarium Pharmaceutical tests is that there are 2 additives with the Hach test. The practical upshot of this is that, if you add the powder to the test water and it immediately turns blue (assuming it's supposed to start out pink), then you know it took 0 drops, meaning that there is none of what you're testing for. The AP tests don't work like this, and there's no way to differentiate 0 drops from 1 drop--you just get to assume. So, with the Hach test I confirmed 0 ppm mineral hardness on the ion exchange water... like you'd expect.

Anyway, I hope someone finds the data useful... I've still yet to do any formal comparative testing of all these water solutions. And I still need to get ahold of Tony Fischer to ask him more about how Claris works. At least today I've eliminated part of my question--it actually preserves a pretty good bit of mineral hardness.

shadowfax wrote:Anyway, I hope someone finds the data useful... I've still yet to do any formal comparative testing of all these water solutions.

Yes, with the frequent changes in L.A. water sources, I've decided to just shoot myself, instead.

Marshall wrote:Yes, with the frequent changes in L.A. water sources, I've decided to just shoot myself, instead.

Yes, I've seen variation at my house before--jumping around between the 2 values I've observed in these tests, ~275 ppm TDS and ~330 ppm TDS. Aggravating, but I think that's a safe bracket for me, especially given that it doesn't appear that the alkalinity fluctuates near as much as the TDS, and it looks like Claris will provide pretty good values given either.

Of course, if your water bounces around a lot worse than that, particularly if the alkalinity bounces around, you may have to resign yourself to testing your water weekly. Shoot yourself indeed, this is a PITA to be doing that often. Although, I say you can cry me a river till you've sat down for 2 hours and tested the system at all 7 settings AND the tap AND a salt ion exchange sample. That's only, what, 18 titration tests, plus a couple extras for the ones you screw up?

Any updates?

Mark

I'm sure if I read more topics thoroughly someone would be able to tell me what I'm doing is wrong but I take a controlled approach in order to reduce hassle. I have a 75g/day RO system the output of which I connect to a calcite/GAS inline filter. I used an array of fittings and valves to set up a mixer system whereby I can independently adjust the TDS/hardness/PH going to 1) the plumb-in Alex Duetto and 2) to the counter spigot (by mixing pure RO water with conditioned water using the respective mixing valves). It doesn't matter what the city provides me going into the system. We have various hobbies which use different types of water so this works best.

Mark, I don't think anyone could tell you what you're doing is wrong--in fact, assuming your mixing arrangement doesn't float around and is properly adjusted, this is arguably a total dream water setup, though in my experience I'd have to say that such a setup is (usually) dramatically overkill for getting great coffee water, which is accomplished cheaply in most places with just an ion exchange water softener and/or a carbon filter. But again, even if that is true for your water supply, it's not like you've done anything wrong, and in fact I'd be quite curious to read the details about how you have built your setup, how costly it was, what you have it set at for espresso, and, if you've tried a variety of settings, what your thoughts on making those changes are. If you'd like to follow up on that, please feel free to start a new topic on it, as it's a very significant departure from the topic of this thread.

Other Mark: I've got nothing new to report here, other than that I haven't experienced any problems with the setup and I have been making delicious espresso. I do need to take some readings on the water to see how it's performing, as I haven't done that in awhile. I'll post that data when I collect it. Other than that, my taste testing hopes still haven't panned out; I just haven't gotten around to it. That said, I've met some new coffee people lately that could definitely do triangle testing of some of this stuff with me, so chances are it will be better than it would have been if I'd gotten around to it sooner... if I ever get around to it.

Nicholas -
I was looking at getting a Claris unit. Where did you order yours?

My La Spaz S1 V2 has been fed by the house main water supply to the Chris Coffee softener/filter kit for the last year. I never was satisfied with the water and picked up a tds meter and it read 385-425ppm! No wonder it wasn't great. The unfiltered water was actually lower in TDS...how strange.

Last night I pulled out the Flojet and accumulator (thank you for selling it to me), sanitized and changed over to a bottle fed system. I went to the local water store and filled a jug of their water at 9ppm and mixed it to 70 ppm. So far, better, but extractions are not looking great....quick and early blonding.

Do you think the Claris system is a good setup, or should I stick with the flojet/accumulator? Any other things you would recommend for getting the water to be ideal for espresso?

Thanks!
Darren

ljcoffeeguy wrote:I was looking at getting a Claris unit. Where did you order yours?

I got mine as a 'free sample' directly from Tony Fischer of Everpure, as I disclosed at the end of the first post. I am unaware of the availability of the system at this point, but personally I'd just call them and ask, as I doubt their distributors, if you can find one that offers Claris, will undercut them much if at all.

ljcoffeeguy wrote:My La Spaz S1 V2 has been fed by the house main water supply to the Chris Coffee softener/filter kit for the last year. I never was satisfied with the water and picked up a tds meter and it read 385-425ppm! No wonder it wasn't great. The unfiltered water was actually lower in TDS...how strange.

If you don't have an RO or deionizing system, I wouldn't bother with the TDS meter except as a matter of curiosity; it's all but useless with an ion exchange water softener. You need a GH/KH test kit to measure your hardness and alkalinity. Also, have you changed the carbon filter in the past year? Have you recharged the resin in that time? If not, your setup may just be resisting water flow and not much else. Those things can run out of flitration capacity, or they can go foul.

ljcoffeeguy wrote:I went to the local water store and filled a jug of their water at 9ppm and mixed it to 70 ppm. So far, better, but extractions are not looking great....quick and early blonding.

Are you sure the early blonding is your water's fault? I'd be inclined to agree if you were using the 9 ppm water, but I've had RO + carbon-filtered tap water here in Houston mixed to about 75-80 ppm TDS, and I can get a pretty darn nice shot with it. I'd be suspecting puck prep, then coffee, then grinder blades long before water. But it doesn't hurt to have the water test kits... geeking out with the titration kits is fun—at least the first 5 or so times. Not so much after you spend 2 hours testing TDS/GH/KH for 6 or 8 different waters...

mhoy wrote:Any updates?

Man, this is some horrible turnaround, but I finally got around to rechecking my Claris, all the way up and down the board, today. the results are in sheet 4 (labeled with today's date) of the Google Doc I've previously published. I was very impressed to find that in around 10 months of using this thing it shows little sign of changing its filtering properties, at least the ones I can measure (mild TDS reduction, general hardness and alkalinity/carbonate hardness).

I've been really happy with Claris. It's compact, flexible, and quite trouble free. I've had my brew boiler cap open on a very regular basis over the past year that I've had the GS3, and I have seen no signs of scale whatsoever (though I did have that verdigris issue discussed here). I've enjoyed lots of great espresso over the past year with my boiler safe, and that's pretty much exactly what I wanted. I'd temper that endorsement by saying that I don't think it's much if at all superior to a rechargeable salt-based ion exchange softener, mainly just a lot less trouble (IMO) and more compact and simple (i.e. all in one, rather than a softener + carbon filter setup). If that's something that interests you, I think Claris is easily worth it. I hope that helps people. I'll try to keep my numbers more up to date moving forward, as I imagine I must be exhausting this filter some time in the next six months or so. Maybe not, this thing is really huge (I have the XL).