Hi there,

I just got my first home espresso machine, the new La Marzocco Linea Micro. Immediately I got deep into the water rabbit hole wasting hours of my life in the process!!

It seems to me I can use Aqua Panna, although that would be on the harder side.

I usually drink Mountai Valley water, which is way too hard. Mountain Valley has 220 TDS, 200 hardness, 190 Alkalinity, 3 Chloride, 7.1 PH.

My question is - if I mix Mountain Valley 50/50 with distilled water (or 40/60 maybe) then it seems to me the numbers get pretty close to the recommended ranges. Is this something the experts in this forum think would work?

Thank you

Yes, that would work. Your hardness and alkalinity will be reduced in proportion to the dilution. The analysis report for mountain valley indicates an alkalinity of 190 mg/L, a total hardness of 200 mg/L, and a calcium hardness of 168 mg/L (all as CaCO3). The high alkalinity and very low chloride and sulfate make this a nice water for this purpose.

You could dilute it with 40/60 and end up with a GH:KH of 80:76 mg/L as CaCO3 with a calcium hardness of 67 mg/L, which would require you to watch out for limescale. I think I would dilute it down more to avoid limescale. At 20/80 you'd have a GH:KH of 40:38 with calcium hardness at 34 mg/L as CaCO3. That's enough alkalinity for machine health and the calcium is low enough that you expect little or no limescale deposits in a 125℃ steam boiler.

thank you!