I'm currently using up TWW Espresso Profile for the Technivorm I now have. Since you can't open it up easily to clean inside the boiler it seems like the Espresso Profile would be a good idea for the same reasons as it is with espresso machines. But I'm not sure if it matters. I'm probably overthinking it, as we do here on the Water forum.

Anyway if it was you and your peasant autodrip machine would you go TWW Espresso, TWW Classic, rpavlis, or tap water and who cares because drip?

Tap water only if non-scaling. Better to avoid having to descale in any machine.

Among the rest, it comes down to convenience, cost, and your taste preferences with the coffees you use

Jeff wrote:Tap water only if non-scaling. Better to avoid having to descale in any machine.

The problem with tap water I've noticed, at least in the buildings I've lived in here in NYC, is it's not particularly clean. Whether it's from supply interruptions or pipe-flushing or whatever, over the weeks I see sediment appearing in the top of filters or the clear connectors in espresso machines. It is soft enough to not worry about scale, but it seems to carry sand/silt/rust I don't know. Something always appears after about three weeks.

Shojin wrote:if it was you and your peasant autodrip machine would you go TWW Espresso, TWW Classic, rpavlis, or tap water

For me, I think charcoal filtered tap water as long as it's not from a very hard water source. Keep it simple.

Except for hard tap water, none of these will give you a scale problem in a drip brewer. The TWW classic has a downside of having zero bicarbonate buffer and about 16 mg/L of potentially corrosive chloride ion, but for a peasant drip machine that shouldn't really matter.

I doubt that I could taste a difference, but we have had a report by at least one experienced taster that they preferred the classic over the espresso profile in technivorm brews: Third Wave Water capsules - add to water for better tasting coffee . Take anecdotes like that with a grain of salt as it will depend on the coffee and the taster. The TWW espresso has low bicarbonate and the TWW classic has none, so maybe is brighter. Also the classic supposedly* has a smidgen of sodium chloride (table salt), giving you 10 mg/L sodium ion as recommended by the old SCAA standard.

Shojin wrote: ... and who cares because drip?

Might be worth mentioning that in the special case of high alkalinity (like very hard water that has been conventionally softened) a drip brew is far less tolerant than an espresso would be. Gven the high ratio of water to coffee that you have with drip, you expect more dulling of the brew's acidity by the alkalinity of the water.


* Basing this on the formulas that Taylor Minor (HB member bigdaub) shared a while back: Third Wave Water capsules - add to water for better tasting coffee

homeburrero wrote:For me, I think charcoal filtered tap water as long as it's not from a very hard water source. Keep it simple.

A big reason for getting a drip machine was simplicity - I might just do this and give it a flush through with Biocaf once with each filter pack change (80 cups). The water here doesn't scale at all and the inside of the kettle is spotless.

Shojin wrote:The problem with tap water I've noticed, at least in the buildings I've lived in here in NYC, is it's not particularly clean. Whether it's from supply interruptions or pipe-flushing or whatever, over the weeks I see sediment appearing in the top of filters or the clear connectors in espresso machines. It is soft enough to not worry about scale, but it seems to carry sand/silt/rust I don't know. Something always appears after about three weeks.

NYC water from upstate reservoirs is soft excellent drinking water. We get get our water in my town in Westchester County from the same source. It is about 25 ppm TDS. Here is a report. (https://www.greenburghny.com/DocumentCe ... ity-Report) I have found that my espresso and brewed coffee improved when I supplemented the tap water with half strength RPavlis salt solution. I make a 2000-fold stock solution of potassium bicarbonate and add it to my tap water. If you have sediment it is from old NYC pipes. I would put it through a filter to remove particulates and add some potassium bicarb. It's a cheap experiment.