Aquiem is Literally Water for Coffee

Daily Coffee News wrote:Aquiem is water specifically formulated for coffee - water that has been purified to zero mineral content, then combined with a precise and purportedly ideal recipe of minerals and other components

Nice reference to Home-Barista in the article.

Doesn't really say anything about preventing scale buildup, just superior taste. Presumably, as it is relatively distilled with minerals re-added and a TDS of 150 I assume that this would be a pre-made version of what most people strive for at home to balance scale buildup and taste? Would be interesting to hear first hand experience if anyone has tried it.

Yeah I'd be curious to hear what the balance of Mg to Ca is; with 150 TDS it might tend to produce scale, depending on the Ca levels.

Also, for shipping purposes it seems crazy expensive to ship liters of water across the country. I'd be more interested (depending on what the levels of additives are) in buying a powder or a concentrate that I could use to remineralize distilled water. Not that this is that hard to do at home from scratch, but if there was a nice powder or concentrate available at the right price, I could see buying it for the convenience.

It says they want to sell at whole foods and the like so you probably wouldn't need to worry about shipping.

Fair enough. Depending on how it brews and scales, I could envision paying a bit extra over distilled water to have something already mixed, but not a lot more. If this sells for more than 2X what a gallon of distilled costs, count me out.

I wonder which grocery stores they're already in? Production is out of Miami, which isn't far from me. Tweeted them up and will respond here if I learn anything or find the product on a shelf.

[creative nickname] wrote:Fair enough. Depending on how it brews and scales, I could envision paying a bit extra over distilled water to have something already mixed, but not a lot more. If this sells for more than 2X what a gallon of distilled costs, count me out.

Unless they offer a bulk package, this will sell for more than 2x distilled water. The package volume on the website is 1 liter. My guess is that they sell at a Smart Water price point, which is about 4x the price of distilled water.

Their website currently lists a 12-pack of 1-Liter cartons for $25.68. That's over 20x the cost of DI water from Whole Foods ($0.39/gal).

I guess the target market are people who are buying lots of volvic to brew with. Heck, when I'm on the road I might break down and buy some. But at more than 8X the price of distilled, I can't in good conscience justify buying it to avoid 1 minute of mixing concentrate into each jug, or the 5 minutes it takes every few months to make a batch of concentrate.