For a new GS3 MP that you really want to pamper (as in avoiding scale), if you had to choose from 2 Crystal Geyser sources, which would you choose?

Here in Japan, both the Weed (Mt. Shasta) and the Olancha Peak CG sources are available. The one you get depends on bottle size, but the price per liter is almost identical. 1 gallon bottles are all from Olancha Peak and any other size is from Weed.

The Weed water seems very good. Some of the more salient numbers:

Alkalinity: 44-55
Total Hardness: 26-36
Calcium Hardness: 14
pH: 7.3 to 7.4
No chlorides
Sulfates around 1.0

The Olancha peak offers these numbers:

Alkalinity: 55-67
Total Hardness: 56-70
Calcium Hardness: 50-60
pH: 7.0 to 8.0
Chlorides around 3.25
Sulfates about 35

So, some differences. I think either one would be fairly good, but it seems the Weed water would be almost surely non-scaling, and the pH variance of the Olancha Peak water bothers me a bit. No chlorides seem to give Weed an edge, too, since chlorides & corrosion seem to go together with any borderline "aggressive" waters.

But taste...
Maybe the Weed is a bit too soft?

Would anyone choose Weed, but "enhance" it?
How about Olancha Peak?

Would love to read opinions and speculations.

Home use. Maybe 6-7 beverages per day max.

Yuki

And to reply to myself ...

Would anyone buy both (no reason I could not) and mix them?

Yuki

You could mineralise your own from purified water. https://baristahustle.com/blogs/barista ... er-recipes

The hardness parameters are fairly different. I would go for Weed water choice

Tony_Lotts wrote:You could mineralise your own from purified water. https://baristahustle.com/blogs/barista ... er-recipes

Thanks. I have considered it for sure. The drawbacks I can see are the cost of the purified water (it's considerably more than just natural water), and the lack of space in a Japanese home (if I was going to use, say, a distiller). I'm not going to rule the idea out however.

Is there a practical limit to the length of the feed for plumbing in? I've read you can't go very far, and I've also seen people claim something like 15 feet has worked. I could consider that, with a softener under the sink, but then I'd have to give up precious storage space under that sink.

I could also just mix tap and pure, but then I have chlorine unless I use an additional filtration step. Titration seems to indicate we're at about 6gr here, which could easily be reduced by cutting it. Ah, decisions.

Yuki wrote:Thanks. I have considered it for sure. The drawbacks I can see are the cost of the purified water (it's considerably more than just natural water), and the lack of space in a Japanese home (if I was going to use, say, a distiller). I'm not going to rule the idea out however.

Distilled, deionised, or reverse osmosis water should be attainable for around the same price per litre as natural water. If you saw one priced high, perhaps it was a "designer" water that was alkalised, or has something else added to it. Don't waste your money. I understand the space constraint, you don't need a distiller machine.

Congrats on a very clear post here, Yuki

My opinion is that you could use either without damage to your machine. The Weed/Shasta source has good alkalinity, should not corrode, and as you say, you'd never need to descale.

In theory, it may not extract as well as the Olancha water. In addition, the Olancha water is closer to what the La Marzocco water people are currently recommending. (LM tends to recommend relatively hard water, with total hardness up in the 90-100 mg/L range.*)
You could try both, and if the Olancha tastes better for your preferred beans, then go with that and keep an eye out for scaling in the steam boiler. It should not scale much. The chloride and sulfate levels are low enough and the alkalinity high enough that it should not be corrosive.

Since you can get both, there's nothing wrong with experimenting to come up with a mix of the two to get a lower hardness with the best tasting coffee. At a 2:1 mix of Olancha:Weed, you would have a calcium hardness of about 40 mg/L (as CaCO3, of course) and getting into the non-scaling zone for a 125C steam boiler. (per Jim's Insanely Long Water FAQ.)

I wouldn't worry at all about the pH variability of the Olancha water. It's above 7, and sitting in the reservoir it will come to the equilibrium pH for that alkalinity - about 7.1. The Weed water pH would probably drop to about the same. (After sitting in an open reservoir, water will absorb or release CO2 to match the atmosphere, and carbonic acid will reach an equilibrium pH that is predicted by the bicarbonate alkalinity.)

* Here are a few links to LM water guidance:
http://techcenter.lamarzocco.com/jsp/Te ... ulator.jsp
http://www.lamarzoccousa.com/wp-content ... ations.pdf
http://international.lamarzocco.com/en/ ... episode-2/

homeburrero wrote:Congrats on a very clear post here, Yuki

Since you can get both, there's nothing wrong with experimenting to come up with a mix of the two to get a lower hardness with the best tasting coffee. At a 2:1 mix of Olancha:Weed, you would have a calcium hardness of about 40 mg/L (as CaCO3, of course) and getting into the non-scaling zone for a 125C steam boiler. (per Jim's Insanely Long Water FAQ.)

I wouldn't worry at all about the pH variability of the Olancha water. It's above 7, and sitting in the reservoir it will come to the equilibrium pH for that alkalinity - about 7.1. The Weed water pH would probably drop to about the same. (After sitting in an open reservoir, water will absorb or release CO2 to match the atmosphere, and carbonic acid will reach an equilibrium pH that is predicted by the bicarbonate alkalinity.)

Lovely reply Homeburrero/Pat.

That's precisely the kind of additional input I was looking for, and I really appreciate it. You really helped me flesh out some options, and specifically answered some of my worries, as well as reinforcing some things I thought perhaps I knew, but wasn't 100% sure about. Many thanks.

Cheers!

Yuki

homeburrero wrote:Congrats on a very clear post here, Yuki

Sometimes things don't go quite as planned, homeburrero.

As it turns out, Amazon Japan had incorrect information on their site, and it turns out that the only Crystal Geyser water they supply is from the Mt. Shasta source, which is probably okay, but is pretty low in hardness.

Alkalinity: 44-55
Total Hardness: 26-36
Calcium Hardness: 14
pH: 7.3 to 7.4
No chlorides
Sulfates around 1.0

May I ask the best way to go about bringing that hardness up to a similar level as you suggested previously with the 2:1 Olancha:Shasta idea?

Yuki

Yuki wrote:May I ask the best way to go about bringing that hardness up to a similar level as you suggested previously with the 2:1 Olancha:Shasta idea?

I see no way that would be as straightforward as just mixing those two CG waters would have been.

I suppose you could bump up that Weed water, increasing the calcium and total hardness without increasing alkalinity by adding CaCl, or increasing the magnesium and total hardness by adding Epsom salt, but that would have the effect of adding chloride or sulfate, neither of which would be ideal for someone who wants to baby their cherished espresso machine.

For experimenting with harder water to see if you can see a taste improvement, I think you could make up an Epsom salt concentrate as discussed in this post: Matt Perger's water recipe for coffee - Is it ok/safe for espresso machines? What do you think? and add small quantities of that concentrate to your Weed water. Each 5 ml added per liter would bump your total hardness by 19 mg/L. It would not increase your alkalinity or calcium hardness, but it would bump your sulfate by about 18 mg/L.

FWIW, I'm not sure that you really need more hardness (more Ca and Mg ions) in the water, so if it were me I'd just stick with that CG from the Weed source. I currently make my own water from salts*, and it's really very close to that Weed water. (My homemade water numbers are, in mg/L CaCO3 equivalents: Alkalinity = 50, Total hardness = 40, Calcium hardness = 20, zero sulfate and zero chloride. No scale problems, no corrosivity problems, and my aging taste buds don't detect an improvement when I experiment with harder water.)

*I add potassium bicarbonate, calcium carbonate, and magnesium carbonate, each at 0.2 mmol/L in ZeroWater.