After months of pulling my hair I found that TWW needs from 48 to 72 hours to fully dilute.

I had been using Crystal Geyser(Mt. Shasta and Olancha) water for years with good results. I bought several boxes of TWW a while back to see if my shots could taste even better. To my surprise not only were they subpar it simply made every shot from every coffee I know taste absolutely disgusting. I tried shaking the water/TWW mixture for 5 mins straight, but the results were the same. I tried heating up the water in the microwave to accelerate the dilution, but no joy. The espresso all came out thin, pale, watery and very, very bitter. It basically tasted like if I was using simply distilled water with no minerals.

I went back to Crystal Geyser and the sweetness, body and aroma all came back. Even looking at the extraction from a bottomless portafilter you could tell it was darker and more syrupy. With the TWW it would always blond in record time. Three days later I ran out of Crystal Geyser water and since I had two gallons of unused(3 days old) TWW I just dumped it in the tank. To my surprise the espresso tasted even better than Crystal Geyser. This made no sense whatsoever. I kept pulling shots and they all tasted great. I changed to another coffee and it also tasted great. Different parameters resulted in slightly different flavors, but they were still all great. Then, I ran out of TWW water so I made a new batch. Same coffees that I had just tasted completely made a 180 turn for the worst. Absolutely disgusting shots one after the other.

At this point I am thinking what the actual ^%@$? I went back to Crystal Geyser and didn't look back for a while.

I couldn't get that TWW behavior out of my head so a few weeks later I made another batch and let it sit for 24hrs. The espressos tasted terrible so I waited 72 hours and then they were excellent. I have done this experiment several times now with the exact same results. I have even tried different(just in case) brands of distilled water and even ZERO water. This was not due to a bad batch of TWW since I have bought lots since. What boggles my mind is that I am pretty sure a lot of people use TWW and I have never heard anybody complain about this. TWW instructions don't mention anything about needing that extended waiting time for it to fully dilute. They only mention mix, shake and brew. In their faqs section they also mention to let the water sit for a little bit till the cloudiness goes away. I am pretty sure they don't mean 72 hours by that.

Thanks for sharing.. I have two 5-gal jugs with TWW.. so one always is sitting for a long time (at least a week) before I use.. It's great to Know how long to rest it for it to be fully absorbed.

F1 wrote:After months of pulling my hair I found that TWW needs from 48 to 72 hours to fully dilute.

What is the source water you are starting with? Is it distilled or RO? And is this the TTW standard or espresso?

Do you have a TDS meter that you could use to verify the concentration at different time intervals of 24 and 48 hours? Can you dilute the concentration and affect the TDS result? Meaning you cut the TTW water with 50% demineralized water and reduce the TDS by 50%? Just curious if the effect is measurable in some way.

During troubleshooting I tried different brands of distilled water even though that shouldn't make a difference. I also tried using Zero water. The end result was always the same. I did measure the TDS and I don't remember it being different from day 1 to 3. I use TWW espresso formulation.

I have never been able to get TWW to fully dissolve in my distilled or RO. There's always a little sand left over. Did I get a bad batch?

I use 5 gal jugs.. Now it takes about 2-3 weeks to go through. And I shake every 4 days or so.. but I do not see any 'silt' in my jugs. I use the espresso blend with RO water.

I put the powder in before filling.. then I shake about 1 gal in.. I shake after filling (I leave some headroom).

I tried exactly that. I ended up going even more extreme, where I'd heat that first gallon to boiling first and try to dissolve the TWW on the stove.

There's still always a little that refuses to dissolve.