Currently have a La Cimbali Bistro M32, a Cassadio A1 Dieci, and hopefully (assuming UPS didnt total it completely), a yet to be delivered La Cimbali Jr 2013.

I have searched and search and search and I can not get a clear answer. My question is,

Can I use Alkaline water on these machines?

Alkaline water has little to no Chlorine, Fluoride, Bromide etc. I figured 1, less harmful minerals in it, 2, better tasting water, and 3, because it has less sediments on it, scale build up would be down to a minimum. There is a local water shop that uses top of the line filtration to make it, I love the water and I figured, why not use it on my coffee machines that I will be using for my business. For my business I will be using a 5 gallon water jug with a pump to push water into the espressos. I have been told NOT to use distilled water, and that regular water running through a filter gives the best espressos. It was also recommended I NOT use alkaline water. I can never get a clear answer as to why. Why can't I have the best of both worlds and use Alkaline water to 1, protect the machines and 2, give what I think should be good tasting waster.

To a chemist, 'alkaline water' might mean any water with a higher than neutral pH. In the consumer market, 'alkaline water' usually refers to a very high pH water, often at a pH of 9 or higher - that makes it appeal to a niche consumer market that thinks (wrongly, in my opinion) that drinking high pH water is healthier. It can have a wide variety of hardness and other minerals and still be called alkaline water, but usually it would be hard and scale prone. You generally don't want that high pH in your coffee water, nor in your espresso boiler (all else being equal, high pH would make the water more scale prone. )

You seem to think that your local shop's version of alkaline water has low mineral content, but I would still steer clear of it without knowing more about what is in it. If you learn that it actually has appropriate levels of alkalinity (40 - 75 mg/L as CaCO3 is the conventional recommendation), low undesirables (e.g., chloride, iron, chlorine, chloramine, silica), and low enough hardness to avoid scale, then it *might* be OK.