Espresso

[Lucky Phil]

4 minutes ago, Gmc28 said:

the water quality rabbit hole gives me a headache.  very real, but man it gets complicated.   you do of course want good or great quality water, but exactly what that means can get convoluted pretty quick, and the espresso snob community gets way, way into that (another "motor oil" type discussion).  certainly a level of diminishing returns there as a good solution is pursued, but where the sweet spot is between  "its not perfect" and "its good enough", can be hard to find.

My well water comes out hard and with lots of "stuff" (ppm) in it.  it's then softened, and comes out slightly acidic and low ppm.  It then goes through what most consider a good quality in-line filter, just for the espresso machine (plumbed in), and it comes out with a higher ph and higher ppm.  it actually ends up about where it should be on ph and ppm, but how I don't yet understand.  All stuff I never wanted to know...

I agree and I'm not anal about my coffee but then again where I live the standards are high. one of the places I stayed in in Italy the room elcheapo espresso machine had a disposable bag of some sort in the water tank. I'm assuming it was to condition the water in some way as it was a country villa and may well have been using bore or tank water. Need to research this.

Phil

[Gmc28]

They sell reverse osmosis setups that then also re-mineralize the water, and they are arguably affordable ($250-500), not hard to install, and assure water will at least be “good” in most cases.  Seems to be as close to a “plug and play” solution as I’ve seen, for well or city water.   I’ve thought about it, but bit of a hassle to probably yield something barely measurable in improvement in my own case.

[stewgnu]

This thread reminds me of a job i did maybe fifteen years ago.

Now, i love a Good coffee, have one every morning using a wee Dualit machine with Lavazza espresso beans.  Yum.

I was on a job plastering this chaps chimney breast and I’m working away, spread spread spread, he’s got a few chums round having a natter, then this smell of coffee wafts through to the room i’m workin in… dear gawd it smells divine, like really really good coffee.

So i’m working away there, spread spread spread, and after a while he pops his head in and gives it: “That’s looking really good there Stewart, would you like a brew at all?”  “That’d be super, thank you, I’d love a coffee cheers” I says, smackin me lips in anticipation (I can still smell the Good Stuff on the ether).

5 mins later he comes in and hands me a mug of nescafe.

Git.