In a recent thread: Home made water: Choices and experiences

LBIespresso wrote:I don't know how to create a poll on here but I thought it would be interesting to have a poll on who uses what water recipe and a thread on preferences and experiences. TWW, R. Pavlis, Barista Huste, etc...

There is a lot of discussion on here about the many recipes out there but I did find anything comparing the many recipes both for ease as well as taste.

To keep it less complicated I was thinking of a recipe that starts with distilled. Is there any interest in such a poll/discussion? I know I am not addressing espresso vs pour over but that could either go in the discussion or we could just say this is for espresso?

So here's a poll, focusing on DIY water for espresso to see what water options are being used by folks with reservoirs, direct-filled boilers, or espresso cart setups that allow mixing water in a container. For plumb-in setups with filtration systems I think we would need a special poll.

For help about which to choose:

Bottled water
Choose this if you use water that you buy already bottled, for example Volvic, Gerber Pure, Crystal Geyser.

Purified + bicarbonate
Purified (distilled, de-ionized, RO) that has nothing but potassium bicarbonate or sodium bicarbonate added to it. The 'rpavlis' water recipe (100 mg/L of potassium bicarbonate), named after HB member and chemistry professor Robert Pavlis is the canonical example.

Third Wave Water
Choose this if you use purified water that has been mineralized using commercially available Third Wave Water packets. It's available in different profiles (classic, espresso, dark) but espresso machine users generally use the espresso profile.

Barista Hustle and 70/30 recipe water
Choose this if you use purified water that has been mineralized per Matt Perger's recipes using sodium bicarbonate as a buffer and epsom salt for magnesium hardness. The BH recipes specify sodium bicarbonate, but some users use potassium bicarbonate instead. This choice would be for any variant of the many Barista Hustle recipes or the similar 70/30 recipe from Five Senses Coffee

Diluted or fortified tap water
Choose this if you dilute your tapwater with distilled, or spike it with additional mineral or bottled water.

Other recipe water
Choose this if you use some recipe not mentioned above. For example recipes based on beer brewing salts, or calcium or magnesium carbonate salts. Or if you use a mix of two or more bottled waters.

Tap water
Choose this if you just use tap water with no treatment (including in-tank softeners) other than charcoal and sediment filtration. Pitcher-filtered tap water (Brita, Pur, etc) and tap water from your refrigerator filter would belong here.

In-tank softened tap water
Choose this if you use tap water but with a softening resin filter in the tank. This includes the pouch filters (OSCAR, Bilt, Rocket, BWT) that you drop in that tank as well as inline filters inside the tank (Breville Claro-swiss) that contain a softening resin.

Other treated tap water
Choose this if you use tap water that has gone through a whole house or point of use treatment system, including RO systems and softening systems.

I voted Pavlis water, but what I actually do is add 0.4 g of potassium bicarbonate to tap water. Right now the tap water measures 17 ppm on a cheap TDS meter, so I reckon that's close enough.

Based on Pat's help assessing my city's water supply I've switched to using my filtered tap water and add 0.2g of potassium bicarbonate and 0.2g of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) to take me to a good place in terms of total alkalinity (buffer) and total hardness. Initially Pat had suggested .5g of the magnesium sulfate but I found it added nothing good to the extraction that I wasn't getting with less.

Once again I can't thank Pat enough for guiding me to a simple, easy to implement solution that put's me right in the middle of all of the "good water" windows.

Pat,

Thanks for setting up this poll. You didn't mention softened well water, so I assumed that would fit in the category of Other treated tap water, since we drink our whole house softened well water out of the tap.

I'd like to see a similar poll for water recipes used specifically for filter brewing too...

BH using distilled water.

I use the Pavlis recipe because it is so easy and works well. I am curious to hear from others that have used it and have moved on to something else.

It works well for me and is as easy as making your own gets but we here seem to be susceptible to complicating our lives if it means better coffee so...

Brewzologist wrote:I'd like to see a similar poll for water recipes used specifically for filter brewing too...

Me too

I use aquacode sachets for filter and 15/85% evian/distilled for espresso. So ticked other recipes

I use the original barista hustle recipe, where both components went into the same concentrate solution rather than having two separate concentrates. I make my concentrate half strength, which seems to make it last longer without precipitating out.

I add the concentrate to pure water from a zero water pitcher.