Currently I have a superautomatica Jura S9. I purchased this used several months ago before I began reading this site. Since that time, I understand my machine is crap compared to what I should've bought .
I'm going to buy (hopefully from someone here!) an Elektra semiautomatica, this is the one I want:
http://www.amazon.com/Elektra-Semiautom ... 003OGTXTG/
I would settle for something in it's same class, but really like this one and the owner of the site here likes this one too.

My question: What water do I use for my current Jura? I bought gallon bottled water and the TDS is 138
I bought 16oz Aquafina water and the TDS is 03.
Again for my current set up what should I be using?
And when I buy the Elektra, what water should I be using? What TDS range should I be in?

Side note: I'm going to get the mini mazzer as my grinder (I see one posted here, but won't be buying for a few months)

thank you and great site!

I don't measure. I drink a couple of cortados on the weekend and leave the water in the machine with an occasional emptying of the boiler if I skip a week's use.

I use Brita filtered city water and have minimal deposits. Have only had to descale once in 6 years and I probably could have skipped that one.

St Paul, MN tap water => Brita filtered.

thanks, Boldjava!!...anyone else with any thoughts?

Keep in mind, I am a light user. Many folks here are much more detailed/precision-driven about this stuff. Your mileage may vary.

BoldJava is lucky to have such good water for coffee. In San Jose where I live, soap barely lathers and mineral deposits quickly form in boilers, but that's because I have pretty hard water. I ended up opting for blending RO water from refillable 5 gallon bottles from my cooler with 10% filtered tap water and have been happy with the result, but that works for me and my water. With the drought, the water is getting even harder out here.

I'd recommend that you find a local water quality report from your water supplier, maybe do some hardness testing with the titration test kits, and then you'll be able to post your results and be in a better position to get advise. I was listening to the water quality episode of the Audio Cafe podcast with guest Cole McBride of Cole Coffee and he said that he's seen cafes across the street from each other with very different waters which require different treatment.

yakster wrote:BoldJava is lucky to have such good water for coffee. .. .

Our sources are a blend of the northern portion of the Mississippi River and 500' deep artisan wells of the Prarie du Chain aquifer. Very soft water.

Our tap water here comes out of the Clackamas River which flows down off of the snow fields on the West side of Mount Hood. Hardness is about 1.5 grains or 25 ppm. I basically use tap water (with good results in flavor, as well as performance of the autofill circuit), and descale with Cleancaf once every few months. So far so good. (I've thought about using a Brita pitcher but it is not clear to me that I would gain much)

I personally use bottled water, because my main water is just not right. I battled that fight for a while to figure it out.

The water coming in is extremely hard, and it has some iron in it. We did invest in a very capable softening and treatment system, but for coffee purposes.. its not great. Makes for soft showering water and not ruining our faucets, but its too soft for coffee, and I think the stuff we use to take the iron out, also causes problems with the taste of the coffee.

After many attempts to get it working how I had it in my old house(which had textbook coffee water coming out of the faucet), I gave up and went to bottled water, and its been much, much less frustrating.


The water I use is Volvic. I BELIEVE it was one of the suggested bottled waters in the Insanely Long Water FAQ, but don't hold me to that. Coffee tastes great, but I need to descale more frequently than I used too. However, something that I learned because of that.. Descaling is only something to be afraid of until you do it. Once you do it the first time, you'll wonder why you ever worried about it.. I know I personally kind of always put it off.. and when it came time to bite the bullet and get it done.. it was a piece of cake. Now I just wait until the first signs of my vacuum breaker not closing 100% of the time, or 6 months, whichever comes first, and take a hour or so on a weekend and bang it out.

So is there a TDS range that I should be looking to be within?

In FAQ...and more than you probably wanted to know; however it will up your water game

http://web.archive.org/web/200805260723 ... erfaq.html