Have any of you looked at this pitcher to help minimize scale buildup?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M4S269Y/

It removes most of the calcium ions and adds some magnesium so that the espresso still tastes great but there is no scale buildup.

Has anyone tried this product?

Had it for 2-3 months. First time I removed the mushroom to inspect what I saw confirmed what I tought about the product: the machine was plumbed-in the next day. Would never go back: clean and clear...

Don't buy it.

I'm looking at this too. I'm also looking at the BWT reservoir pouches sold by Whole Latte Love and pretty much do the same thing. It will be great to see if people have experience with the pitchers as well as they are much more common.

I have experience with the pitcher. I've been using it for about a year, but I can't say anything about whether it has slowed, stopped or done anything on the scale buildup front. I just got my e61 group serviced and they checked the boilers and the scale "wasn't bad so it didn't need a descale." The tech even said the scale on the mushroom wasn't bad. This is after seven years of use with no descaling. Keep in mind I've always used a combination of filtered water pitchers like ZERO WATER, MAVEA and now BWT with the MG+. I went from the ZERO WATER to the BWT and I do believe the BWT water is tastier and makes a better shot.

I'm not sure if I helped with your decision, but that's my experience.

I've been using it for a few weeks as a stop gap until I plumb-in and filter "properly". The water certainly tastes different from what comes from a carbon filter. Initially, I detected a slight metallic aftertaste in my mouth, but it's gone away.

My tap water's general hardness varies from 120 ppm to 150 ppm with about 80 ppm carbonate hardness. pH is ~7.5 and TDS is up around 200 ppm.

Out of the BWT jug general hardness drops to 80 and carbonate hardness approaches 0. pH drops to 7.0 and TDS is around 150 ppm. This is after 90 refills of the jug...

So it seems the Mg replacement works very well, but that I still have all that Mg in my water...

biketo wrote:My tap water's general hardness varies from 120 ppm to 150 ppm with about 80 ppm carbonate hardness. pH is ~7.5 and TDS is up around 200 ppm.

Out of the BWT jug general hardness drops to 80 and carbonate hardness approaches 0. pH drops to 7.0 and TDS is around 150 ppm. This is after 90 refills of the jug...

So it seems the Mg replacement works very well, but that I still have all that Mg in my water...

Thanks for that post, Owen.

Good to see some actual measurements. That's a radical drop in carbonate hardness (which I assume is your KH measure, aka alkalinity.) If, as expected, they are using a WAC resin (which replaces Ca++ with H+ ions) you would expect that the alkalinity would be reduced. Surprises me a little that it went from 80ppm to near zero.

The caveat about using a WAC resin softener in the presence of chlorides or sulfates would apply to this filter. (See Warning: Chloride & sulfate levels with weak acid cation softeners (e.g., Everpure Claris) ). In general, I would shy away from any filter that reduces my alkalinity to near zero unless I were willing to bump it back up by adding potassium or sodium bicarbonate.

Re the Mg++ replacement, that would have no effect at all on the total hardness or alkalinity (KH) measures. The best way you might try to see the effect of that would be to measure the Ca++ before and after filtration.

P.S.
The BWT web site doesn't have any clear technical discussion of these filters, nor their 'Mg technology'. You can glean quite a bit from their patent though. See https://www.google.com/patents/US8524298

My measurements are from using a temperature-corrcted TDS meter and the API aquarium strips. Yes, the change in alkalinity is a concern from everything I've read so far. It's why I've held off on buying the plumbed-in version of that particular BWT filter. An improvement in taste is great as long as fiddling the water the wrong way doesn't wreck the machine.

It's not surprising that when I plug in the City of Toronto's official (averaged) water quality readings that the Langelier Index at normal temperatures puts it in the "None- Mild Corrosion" zone, but when I change the temp to 115 degrees celsius I'm into "Mild Scale Coating." That jibes with my experience with my old Gaggia. I could do a quick descale once a year with ~monthly backflushing and everything was clean(ish).

I'm using this calculator: http://www.cleanwaterstore.com/resource ... /langlier/

Renegade wrote:Had it for 2-3 months. First time I removed the mushroom to inspect what I saw confirmed what I tought about the product: the machine was plumbed-in the next day. Would never go back: clean and clear...

Don't buy it.

Please elaborate. I don't understand what you suspected and what you saw. Why should I not buy the product?
Also, pardon my ignorance, but what is the mushroom? I am assuming it is something on the E61 group head but can't figure it out.

Spitz.me wrote:
I'm not sure if I helped with your decision, but that's my experience.

All info is helpful. Thanks.

biketo wrote:I've been using it for a few weeks as a stop gap until I plumb-in and filter "properly". The water certainly tastes different from what comes from a carbon filter. Initially, I detected a slight metallic aftertaste in my mouth, but it's gone away.

My tap water's general hardness varies from 120 ppm to 150 ppm with about 80 ppm carbonate hardness. pH is ~7.5 and TDS is up around 200 ppm.

Out of the BWT jug general hardness drops to 80 and carbonate hardness approaches 0. pH drops to 7.0 and TDS is around 150 ppm. This is after 90 refills of the jug...

So it seems the Mg replacement works very well, but that I still have all that Mg in my water...

That is exactly what I am thinking. I want to use it as a stopgap until I actually plumb the damn thing in what will be about 1-2 years from now when we remodel out kitchen. Until Then I want to do whatever I can to keep my new machine clean and working for a long time. Thanks so much for the feedback on the filter.

Please elaborate. I don't understand what you suspected and what you saw. Why should I not buy the product?
Also, pardon my ignorance, but what is the mushroom? I am assuming it is something on the E61 group head but can't figure it out.

I suspected a brita filter is not able to manage the so long list of parameters to control to get a good quality water for your machine and your taste buds. It is like a lazy solution for lazy results and yes it is.

You should not buy this product because managing water parameters for an espresso machine is more complicated than using a brita filter. If you are lucky, your machine will die and/or you will have many problems related to scale buildup and/or rust and/or abrasion or many other problems related to water quality in a couple of years. If you are in hell like me with a poor tap water quality, a brita/BWT filter will cause you problems in the 6 months range.

There is many options available to control your water quality for your machine and to control the taste of your extraction. I usually don't tell people to invest money for an espresso machine if they are not able to repair/diagnose problems related to it or if they are not able to control the quality of the water they are going to put in their drink at a proportion of 90%.

The first thing many GOOD users manual will tell you is to control your water hardness, and a BWT filter won't do that. It will stop rocks from your tap water to get into your espresso machine and will cause more problems by incorporating a lot of things (usually magnesium when we are talking about BWT filter if I remember...) into it to give it a ''good'' taste.

There is many ressources on this forum and on the internet about the fact that you should control your water quality. How freak you are will tell you how far you will go into it, but simple solutions exists to protect your machine.

Regarding your original post: I used it, I saw damages to my machine and I don't recommand this kind of water filtration.

I've been using all different combinations of water pitcher filters from Brita to BWT and my scale buildup over 7 years of use is minimal. You're telling us that we MUST be more insane about water quality because if we're not our machines will be destroyed by water in 6 months to 2 years?