I've read endless posts on what type of water to use and why, however most of the terminology goes over my head. I completely understand the basics (don't use distilled, mineral content is good, hard water is bad, etc.) but once it goes a layer deeper Im lost.

I've been using bottled water but I would like to fully understand how to protect my machine the most I can, using the best water, and WHY I'm using that water.

Note: I have a plumbed in Rocket Evo however I just use the water reservoir. I also live in Florida where the water is awful, if that's relevant at all.

Thanks!
Madeline

Hi. How about this? http://web.archive.org/web/200805260723 ... erfaq.html

It's an hour long, but he does explain everything very well... And how each aspect affects your coffee and equipment

Jim's water faq is worth reading, but it is both very long and slightly out of date. The availability of zerowater and cheap tds meters makes a difference.

Quick and easy method I use (all credit to Jim, who recommended this or something similar) - combining water from a zerowater pitcher with water from a brita pitcher, to a tds of about 60ppm. In my particular case this ends up being roughly 50/50, and I typically just eyeball it. The only reason I bother with the brita is my tap water is highly chlorinated. If you have better tap water you can just mix tap with zerowater. The idea is to add something that contains some minerals to something that does not to arrive at a controlled mineral amount.

TDS meters are cheap these days, and the zerowater pitchers usually include one.

At work, where I don't trust the tap water even a little bit, I add hardness to zerowater with a pinch of gypsum and mineral salt, stuff I keep around cause I'm a homebrewer. Again I shoot for around 60ppm.

I too use the zerowater. I add tap until I get to 30ppm hardness. Then I add potassium bicarbonate to raise the TDs to 100. This is mostly to get a good alkalinity level that's safe for my boiler

What is the supposed advantage of adding minerals back into the water?

Distilled water does not make great espresso in my opinion? PH water under 6.8 will corrode copper boilers?

OldNuc wrote:What is the supposed advantage of adding minerals back into the water?

Unlike carbon filters, zero water really does remove basically everything from your water. Very pure water does not make as good coffee as some with moderate hardness. Sure its being picky, but there's a noticable difference otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Impurities in the water change the extraction, all other parameters held constant.

Also their composition affects flavour differently at comparable extraction.