Hello!

I'm in the final stages of my kitchen remodel and as part of it I am planning to plumb in my machine. I want to make sure I purchase the correct filter. It seems like the BWT Bestmax Premium is the way to go for the remineralization, however I don't have hard water (I have a whole home water softener) so I just want to be sure.

I purchased a TDS meter on Amazon and my water from the tap had a TDS of about 350, so I know that's a bit high.

I went to the pool store in town to get a more comprehensive water test and here are the results:

Total chlorine: 0.06
pH: 8.0
Alkalinity: 229
Adjusted alkalinity: 227
Hardness: 0
Cyanuric acid: 5
Iron: 0
Copper: 0.10

Let me know if there's more info you need.

Thank you for the help!

DoctorRobot wrote:Hardness: 0

Makes sense because of your whole house softener and a low precision test from the pool guys. The actual number, if you were to use a high precision test would be more than zero, maybe 10 or 20 ppm.

Most likely all you need here is something to remove particles, and remove chlorine/chloramine, off tastes and odors. If you have nasty levels of chloride ion in your water, then you may need to resort to a reverse osmosis (RO) system to remove that. Chloride is not the same thing as chlorine and the pool guys don't test for chloride. You may be able to check with your water utility about chloride levels, but based on earlier reports* I think chloride levels for Minneapolis are borderline, around 20 - 30 mg/L, not quite high enough to make most people want to go with RO treatment. But you probably do want to check into your local tap water's chloride levels.

DoctorRobot wrote:It seems like the BWT Bestmax Premium is the way to go for the remineralization.

The Bestmax is a decarbonizing filter that normally reduces hardness and alkalinity, not a remineralizer. You don't need or want that here. The BWT filter that handles particles, chlorine/chloramine, off tastes and odors is called the BWT Besttaste.

* Some discussion and water reports for Minneapolis from a few years back can be found here: Help with Minneapolis MN water quality and filtration needs

What's the best way to test chloride? I am in a suburb and our annual report doesn't call out chloride in the report.

The Bestmax is a decarbonizing filter that normally reduces hardness and alkalinity, not a remineralizer. You don't need or want that here. The BWT filter that handles particles, chlorine/chloramine, off tastes and odors is called the BWT Besttaste.

I thought the Bestmax replaced calcium with magnesium? There is so much conflicting information it's hard to tell anything. If I don't need the Bestmax because of my soft water, is the Besttaste the best option or is there something else I should be looking at?

DoctorRobot wrote:What's the best way to test chloride? I am in a suburb and our annual report doesn't call out chloride in the report.

Often you can find out by calling or emailing someone at your water authority. You can also get a drop titration kit that is easy to use. Chloride can vary seasonally, so you would use that test kit every month or two to get a reasonable average. More info:
The skinny on chloride testing?
Chloride in Water - Recommended Acceptable Ranges

DoctorRobot wrote:I thought the Bestmax replaced calcium with magnesium?

The Bestmax Premium uses a WAC ion exchange resin that is partly loaded with magnesium so that it sometimes replaces a calcium ion with magnesium, and when it does that the calcium hardness is reduced but the total hardness and the alkalinity stay unchanged. The resin also will replace either calcium or magnesium with a pair of H+ ions, and when it does that both the total hardness and the alkalinity are reduced.

DoctorRobot wrote:If I don't need the Bestmax because of my soft water, is the Besttaste the best option or is there something else I should be looking at?

I think any good particulates and GAC or carbon block filter should do the job here. You probably have chloramine if you are on Minneapolis water, which is a little slower to filter than chlorine, and you can find catalytic carbon filters that purportedly do a better job of chloramine removal.

Thanks for all the information! I reached out to my city's facility manager and this is what he said for our chloride levels:

During the summer time our chloride levels are around 60-80 mg/l. During the winter due to the blending of water they are between 80-100 mg/l.

This is higher than I want, correct? So I might need to look into RO if I want to plumb in?

DoctorRobot wrote:This is higher than I want, correct? So I might need to look into RO if I want to plumb in?

Yes, that chloride is really high and could cause corrosion problems. RO and a remineralizer would be good here, unless you want to make recipe water from purified and plumb it into a carboy and flojet-like system. (see Espresso Cart - Goodbye Plumbed In .)

Thought so, thanks for the help! I think I am going to go down the flojet path. I think RO is more than I want to get into for this house.

Hey I'm also from MN! I just ordered a homemaster artesian full contact RO system and I can let you know how it goes for me. I'm on St Paul's municipal water and we get chloride levels in the 30's. This was enough for me to start developing scale problems after only a year of being plumbed in.

I'll be using the LM water test kit, which is pretty comprehensive for coffee and costs less than $15.