Thank you, Jeff.

Being employed in Sonoma County, California...I think I'll go with the wine/beverage route.

Cheers,

ZK

I have found that the easiest way to make the water is to dissolve 400 mg potassium bicarbonate per gallon of water, no concentrate needed.

I just found this product, 800 mg in capsules, so 1 capsule in 2 gallons, DONE!

https://smile.amazon.com/Bicarbonate-Ea ... 628&sr=8-9

Nice find -- pre-weighed doses! Cost is reasonable at around 9 cents per gallon and I like how they clearly specify the contents: "Potassium - - 297 mg from 800 mg potassium bicarbonate"

The OP plans to dose 5 US gallon bottles, so also has a fairly easy option of weighing out 1.9 grams of bulk potassium bicarbonate for each bottle.

Thank you everyone for all of this input. I have purchased the potassium bicarbonate, a glass carboy, and a dispensing stand.

I guess I will descale my unit once to get it back on track, and begin anew with the method shared here and adopted now.

With gratitude,

ZK

Good morning.

I just wanted to follow up on my original post. With all of your input, I'm back on track, and enjoying my daily espresso(s) with no fear of building up excessive scale.

Here were my steps:
1. Purchased Cafetto Descaler
2. Purchased a 5 gallon glass carboy
3. Purchased filtered water from the Pure Water dispenser at the nearby Whole Foods (I must admit I don't trust the integrity of the unit. I mean, who knows what is in or isn't in that water).
4. Purchased Potassium Bicarbonate capsules.
5. Purchased water dispenser stand.

Happy days are here again! Thank you for your help. I'm much obliged.

ZK

ZebcoKid wrote:3. Purchased filtered water from the Pure Water dispenser at the nearby Whole Foods (I must admit I don't trust the integrity of the unit. I mean, who knows what is in or isn't in that water).

You can check it with an inexpensive conductivity 'TDS meter'. A $10 - $20 one will work fine here. On the de-ionized it will indicate less than a few ppm, which guarantees at least that the RO and the de-ionizing resin has is properly maintained. For things that the TDS meter doesn't detect (trace organics and heavy metals, microbes) I think you should be fine because they start with local tap water and use UV irradiation inside the machine.

Thank you, Pat. I'll pick up a meter as you suggest.

Kindly,

ZK

Hello.

I went ahead and purchased the meter. These are the readings...which come from 5 gallons of water from the dispensing machine at Whole Foods, and 3 capsules of Potassium Bicarbonate:






Thoughts?

It's not clear to me what you measured with those two readings.

When taking a water sample to be measured you need to be careful to rinse the sample container with the water you wish to measure, then fill and measure it at around room temperature. It will be most accurate with the temp at 25℃ ( 77℉).

If you clean and carefully rinse the 5 gallon bottle, then fill it with WF de-ionized water, it should read less than a few ppm. Filled with RO it will be unpredictably higher, but still should be well under 50 ppm.

Then after dosing the water with potassium bicarbonate, if you get it right at 100 mg/L it should read in the ballpark of 60 ppm*. If you added the contents of 3 capsules (with 800 mg of potassium bicarbonate per capsule) to 5 gallons, that would bump your potassium bicarb concentration by 126 mg/L**, which on that TDS meter would read about 76 ppm at 25℃.




* The actual TDS of a 100 mg/L KHCO3 mix would of course be 100 ppm (mg/L and ppm are interchangeable for this purpose.) But using an NaCl calibrated conductivity meter only indicates 60 ppm because KHCO3 is less conductive than NaCl. This is a well known consideration when using conductivity meters to roughly estimate TDS.


** 3 capsules * 800 mg/capsule / (5 gallons * 3.8 liters/gallon) = 126 mg/liter

Hello Pat. Sorry for the weak provision of information. Let me try again with a new round of testing. Here are the results.

Home tap water / No Potassium Bicarbonate: 122ppm and 259 us/cm

Vending Machine Water / No Potassium Bicarbonate: 10ppm and 21 us/cm

Vending Machine Water / With Potassium Bicarbonate (3 capsules): 81ppm and 172 us/cm

Refrigerator Water / No Potassium Bicarbonate / Passed Through Refrigerator Filter: 136ppm and 289 us/cm

A surprise? Simply use the vending machine water with no addition of Potassium Bicarbonate?

Thank you for sticking with this. When were done, I'll make you a nice cuppa!