New to the site really and can't find a simple answer to my question (perhaps one does not exist)

I have water spots on my shower doors and glasses so I assumed I have hard water. I ordered and installed a 5 stage ro kit off amazon ( before finding the forum). Of course when I filled my Silvia with the ro water and pulled my first shot I started reading to find out why it tasted so nasty (opposite of what I expected).

I see all kinds of post here about adding this chemical or that.

Is there some sort of canister filter I can put inline after the ro but before my machine (I ordered a r58 and sold the Silvia). That makes the water both descaled and taste good?). If so what, and what media?

Or what Elise would you recommend without me becoming a chemist.

Did you taste the water after it came from the RO system? It should not have any taste at all. Materials left from the machine's manufacture could be creating bad tastes.

Many people also become accustomed to polluted water and think all water should taste like their polluted water does. I know this from drinking brackish water for the first 18 years of my life. (Not good!) For a long time after I moved away from that area I thought water tasted terrible from not being basically 10% sea water! Later I lived in an area where everyone drank practically ion free water, and then water that was not like that tasted bad to me. (I never got over that!)

Water with high ionic strength--lots of ionic impurities--salts of various sorts, will inhibit dissolution of most organic compounds in the coffee. It will also enhance dissolution of some compounds that are good ligands. The water with which you are comparing it might be intensely basic. If I be not mistaken, Illy's famous book mentions that you can compensate for changes in ionic components by grinding coarser in purer water. This makes good sense to a chemist!

You could mix your RO water with the other water too. Many people seem to do that in this area where the water is so bad that you have to descale pots and pans after cooking vegetables! There are also special devices made to put ionic impurities back into water. This seems a study in futility when you can simply mix your RO water with the original water.

Have you actually tested/measured your source water hardness?

You can use a RO system, but you need a softener system, too.

RO water exposed to air becomes acidic.

I threw some limestones into my tank and that was enough to fix the RO water for me. But you can add a little hard water if that isn't enough.

But it will NOT be acidic once it is heated, because the solubility of carbon dioxide in water at high temperature is negligible! Furthermore the minute quantities of carbon dioxide are absolutely dwarfed by the huge quantites of things in the coffee itself.

Not sure I explained it well. This is a direct plumb machine and I need to alter the after between the filter and machine.

The water does not taste bad, the coffee made with it does. Odd is the best description I can use. I have a tds meter and it's 105 or so without filtering. 5 with. I did just order a total hardness test off Amazon and a ph meter after reading on here. Looking for something in a 10 inch canister or similar I cam plumb in

Thanks

Your water, if your meter be correct, is NOTHING in contamination compared to water in many places. What is important is what the impurities in it really are. You should not really be getting much calcium carbonate scale deposits at this level of contaminants. (I am a chemist, and consider any thing in another substance by its proper word, contaminant.) If I were to use the water from almost all municipal water supplies in this area for espresso making I would be buying a new machine VERY frequently. Do you really get any carbonate precipitating out in your boiler?

Do you have a water analysis? Chloride and sulphates both present problems. High concentrations of chloride are absolutely guaranteed to cause severe corrosion, and high concentrations of sulphate will result in calcium sulphate scale which is VERY difficult to remove because it is not soluble in hot weak acids.

One's perception of coffee flavour depends on becoming accustomed to certain flavours. This is far more the case in brewing methods other than espresso, because so little water is used in making espresso.

I personally dislike water with any flavour at all whether for drinking, cooking, or making coffee, etc. I developed this dislike when I lived in an area where water was collected as rainwater with metal roofs which resulted in effective distilled water all the time. Now I live in an area with water that is the very opposite of that!

You might want to look into a re-mineralization cartridge if you feel your RO water is impacting the flavor of the coffee and don't want to mix RO water with filtered water with a bypass or mixing valve.

vesteroid wrote:Not sure I explained it well. This is a direct plumb machine and I need to alter the after between the filter and machine.

The water does not taste bad, the coffee made with it does. Odd is the best description I can use. I have a tds meter and it's 105 or so without filtering. 5 with. I did just order a total hardness test off Amazon and a ph meter after reading on here. Looking for something in a 10 inch canister or similar I cam plumb in.

Yes, you explained yourself well, and your palate is aligned with the rest of Coffeedom. The consensus of the coffee world is that distilled or RO water makes terrible coffee, no matter how the water alone may taste to you or anyone else. Add a calcium cartridge or mix back some of the line water (after passing it through a charcoal filter), just as other people have recommended.

FWIW, my wife is a water treatment chemist and fine cook. She would not use plain RO or distilled water in anything she drinks or cooks.