shadowfax wrote:I have to say, I am with Marshall on this one. . . Why waste $4000 of your hard-earned money on such a wonderful machine to handicap it with water that's known to produce inferior taste? Just because you don't feel like flushing the steam boiler twice a year with a mild citric acid solution? The GS3 steam boiler is one of the easiest boilers of any machine out there to drain, which is the the only potentially challenging part about descaling (that is, on machines that don't feature a drain). certainly got some nuts mixed in...

Hi Nicholas,

Let's forget about the idea of people trying to cobble together some sort of system in their homes that will produce "ideal espresso water" by mixing this and that together and possibly adding chemicals. It's pretty obvious that unless one really knows what they are doing with that approach, it's "nuts."

From a practical standpoint, the only situation worth talking about is a typical home user who has good quality mains water that is too hard, as this is what will produce boiler scale. Using an off the shelf approach, such a home barista has basically two options; (1) cation softening; and (2) removing all the minerals then adding some back in, ala RO or other deionizing treatment, plus calcite cartridge or similar. Not all water that is too hard is the same, so not everyone should choose the same treatment solution, at least that is my contention.

So I ask you, what is the proof that you have, from your own personal experience, that option #2 produces noticeably better espresso than option #1, for all or even most sorts of hard water one receives from a municipal water system? Mind you I'm not talking about "proof" in the sense of the Cirqua coffee convention demonstration, as that is not what they are testing, rather they test deionized water with varying levels of minerals added back in. Regardless of how easy you might think it is to descale a boiler, what is your evidence that an approach requiring that will result in better espresso for most or all home baristas living in hard water areas?

This topic of water treatment comes up periodically, and over time I have had side discussions with quite a few well known home baristas on this topic. I'm a strong believer in watching what people do, rather than what they say. In my conversations with people well known and respected in our home user community, I have not found that the people I consider to be the most knowledgeable, do exotic things with their water. To me this is considerably more telling than any theoretical discussion of this issue.

ken

Ken

I believe you nailed it in that last post with some practical advice. I read this thread only because I will be moving from a soft water situation - 35 ppm TDS out of the tap with slight alkaline pH as measured by strips from my lab- to hard water from a well. I had been Brita filtering the water that brought it to 25 ppm but abandoned that many months ago. I taste no difference in my espresso but obviously I don't know what it would be with slightly harder and more optimum extraction solution. The well water is 210 ppm before Brita and 110 or so (it varies a bit) after but again slightly alkaline. I will probably go with some sort of better system then the Brita or alternatively I will drag home some deionized-distilled water to mix about 1:1.

I await a somewhat definitive option for home espresso enthusiasts to help me make up my mind.

Ken Fox wrote:Let's forget about the idea of people trying to cobble together some sort of system in their homes that will produce "ideal espresso water" by mixing this and that together and possibly adding chemicals. It's pretty obvious that unless one really knows what they are doing with that approach, it's "nuts."

Er, no it's not? Cirqua AB Formula are packets of solution that you titrate in stages into a gallon of RO/Distilled water to make ~150 ppm TDS water (~100 ppm mineral/~50ppm carbonate hardness). This water will probably scale your steam boiler, but you could always mix it with a larger volume of water to reduce the strength of the solution below scaling levels. This water tastes excellent compared to my tap water, even after carbon filtration. Doing this isn't nuts. It's a potentially extremely viable solution for people with 'gross' tap water (and it's not difficult or "nuts" to use).

From a practical standpoint, the only situation worth talking about is a typical home user who has good quality mains water that is too hard, as this is what will produce boiler scale. Using an off the shelf approach, such a home barista has basically two options; (1) cation softening; and (2) removing all the minerals then adding some back in, ala RO or other deionizing treatment, plus calcite cartridge or similar. Not all water that is too hard is the same, so not everyone should choose the same treatment solution, at least that is my contention.

From a practical standpoint, the only situation worth talking about is... yours? Alrighty, I guess you've captured the interest of the state of Idaho... But seriously, I am (relatively) in a similar situation, and I agree that it's going to be the most common defect that a home-barista has to deal with (the second being excessively soft tap water). I agree with (1). (2), I would say that with an RO or DI solution, throwing a calcite filter downstream is enough to keep your boiler probe reading accurately and prevent leaching. I'm not real sure that it's practically much different than RO water in coffee production. But, in essence, some form of mixing to bleed back sufficient minerals, yes.

So I ask you, what is the proof that you have, from your own personal experience, that option #2 produces noticeably better espresso than option #1, for all or even most sorts of hard water one receives from a municipal water system? Mind you I'm not talking about "proof" in the sense of the Cirqua coffee convention demonstration, as that is not what they are testing, rather they test deionized water with varying levels of minerals added back in. Regardless of how easy you might think it is to descale a boiler, what is your evidence that an approach requiring that will result in better espresso for most or all home baristas living in hard water areas?

I'm not really suggesting... that? I used a typical salt-based cation softening system for a long time, and I think it has great use in a number of situations. I believe (based on what I have read) that some calcium/magnesium is beneficial to coffee extraction, and I think one issue with salt-based cation exchange systems is that they remove this, exclusively, without removing any alkalinity. In many situations this leaves a home-barista with 200+ ppm alkalinity, and you really can't have any calcium in your water at that level without having it produce scale. So, I'm interested in a new solution to try out. I'm currently looking at Everpure Claris, a cation softening system of a different persuasion, a system that reduces alkalinity *and* mineral hardness, and has an integrated bypass valve on it to fine-tune your alkalinity (and whatever mineral hardness you get at that alkalinity) as desired. I've only had the system for a week, and I'm not trying to push it, other than to say I find it interesting conceptually. Rest assured that I will be testing it to the best of my abilities, from the simple tests I've talked about in this thread and those I have linked, to triangle cupping with Cirqua 'designer' water, my filtered tap water, and 'traditional' cation-softened, carbon-filtered water. I anticipate that, like Jim's water FAQ results from years ago, that all the water with a reasonable amount of dissolved solids will produce coffee that is somewhat difficult to distinguish. That's my hypothesis.

As to RO mixing, I have no problem with it. I have no direct experience with RO water mixed to produce 30 ppm TDS. I do have experience with RO water mixed to ~75 ppm TDS, which happened to have probably 40-50 ppm alkalinity and much less mineral hardness, which happens to be what I was suggesting. I've had some fantastic shots of espresso at that 'setting,' and that's the only argument I can make for it from experience. I certainly can't diss the low-TDS RO-mix that I have been dissing from my experience, but I certainly wasn't advocating (2) over (1) in any case.

another_jim wrote:Alternatively, demineralizing and then adding a proportion of the original water back, like the Everpure system does, gets you back to ideal water for probably double to triple the per gallon cost, and the added task of occasional descaling.

Just to comment on this shortly, The Claris system's bypass valve would seem to give you the option (at least in most cases) of reducing alkalinity/mineral levels below scaling levels, similarly to what you'd get with an RO/calcite setup, but probably with considerably more "ancillary" chemicals that preexisted in the water, which get ignored by the system and/or bled back in by the ion exchange system. Whether this matters realistically is anyone's guess and a job for a decent triangle cupper (which I may or may not be)...

shadowfax wrote:I used a typical salt-based cation softening system for a long time, and I think it has great use in a number of situations. I believe (based on what I have read) that some calcium/magnesium is beneficial to coffee extraction, and I think one issue with salt-based cation exchange systems is that they remove this, exclusively, without removing any alkalinity. In many situations this leaves a home-barista with 200+ ppm alkalinity, and you really can't have any calcium in your water at that level without having it produce scale.

Like virtually everyone reading this thread, I have close personal experience with the water that comes into my house from a municipal water system, and no experience with anyone else's water. Water that is too soft is a real problem, and I did have the experience of drinking a number of straight shots in a good cafe in Victoria, BC, that showed this defect clearly. They were using fresh beans from a good Vancouver roaster (I believe they were using 49th Parallel; if it wasn't from them, then the beans came from Hines), and their technique was good. The abundant crema collapsed very quickly and the espresso was distinctly inferior to that which I'd had recently before from the same beans. In discussions with the cafe owner, he told me he was aware of the problem and was talking with consultants about putting in some sort of water treatment system. So, soft water is a real problem but it doesn't cause boiler scale, so what you do with it is going to be more of an overall systematic approach rather than just trying to deal with scale (e.g. any scale you get as a result of what you do to the water is "self-inflected," and needs to be considered in the context of how you are treating the water to begin with).

The more common problem is too-hard water, and if you do nothing in that situation then you are going to get boiler scale. That's what I thought this thread was about, being as it started with one Mr. Doggy's too hard water that he had treated down to a lower hardness and who was seeking solutions. But I digress.

I think there is a difference in the scale that you might get after cation softening and the scale you get from unsoftened or designer water. The former, in my own personal experience, is more like a light dusting, especially at the water line, like a powder. The latter is like hard rocks forming in the boiler, at the water line and around the heating elements, which can cause real damage and is a huge PITA to deal with.

I experienced the "light dusting" type of scale using cation softened water a couple of times on my rotary Junior. It manifested itself as a light coating visible on the autofill probe which caused the boiler to fill up higher than desired. Removing this probe and lightly scrubbing it with an abrasive pad got this scale off, with no further treatment. Examination of the boiler showed no significant scale buildup around the element or elsewhere. I should note that I have been fairly religious about purging most of my boiler's contents every couple of weeks or so.

What I'm saying is that I don't think that the possibility of "real" boiler scaling with cation exchange water is much of a real concern, if one exercises reasonable care, such as emptying out most of the water in the boiler every couple of weeks so that the minerals don't build up. I'm not really sure of what is the easiest way to do this with a double boiler system such as a GS3, with the steam boiler, but I'll be doing it shortly since I've had my machine up and running now for almost 2 weeks.

ken

Peppersass wrote:He said the brew boiler won't scale because the temp is always below boiling...

Scale deposits long before boiling.

Is the heater controlled so that its surface temperature is never above the scale precipitation point?

another_jim wrote:About Marshall's and mine comments about using overly soft water

Let me be clear. For me its about the coffee. What about for you and everyone else participating in this how low can you go BS?

You've read everything out there. You just bought one of the most expensive single group espresso machines available. So are making good shots? No, you are so worried about scaling it, that you've just spent $4500 to make shots that aren't as good as preground Lavazza on a mochapot.

Is that clear enough?

Jim,

I think you and Marshall should give it a rest. Honestly.

In your case, you just find these sorts of discussions to be tiresome. I (personally) find most threads on this and any other board to be tiresome, and when I get to the point where I want to throw things, I just stop reading the thread. I suggest you do likewise.

In the dark ages (first on alt.coffee and then later, here) we used to try to be nice to newbie posters. We did this in part out of selfish realization that if there were no newbies, that any newsgroup or forum would die due to natural attrition. We also did this because we remembered all too clearly some of the posts that we, ourselves, had made years earlier, that we were a bit too embarrassed to look at years later in the alt.coffee "archives."

I think you are reading things into some of the posts on this thread that are not there, and perhaps there is a tad of "machine envy" in there as well.

My suggestion is that if you can't deal with this thread, stop reading it.

ken