Hey HB-People,

I am at my wits end and i have no clue how to solve my problem - so your help is greatly, greatly appreciated. I also looked at so many threads, posts and websites, but can't find my answers - but if somebody already posted this & has a solution, please send it to me - also i'd be sorry!
So it's like that:

6 months or so i came to the conclusion that im gonna change my brew water, both for pour-over and espresso.
So i bought distilled water (or at least i thought it was) and followed all the barista hustle recipes and so on...
Now im in Germany and noticed, after some unforeseen events - that the distilled water that's advertised here, isn't "real" distilled water and also pretty bad for your health.

So i swapped from the "distilled water" to a different spring water that has incredibly low mineral content (picture below).
It has a TDS of 32, a GH of 10ppm and a Kh of 4ppm.
[img]userpix/55993_a2ab589b-b4cc-4a1b-9a69-5 ... 849LQ.jpeg[/img]

And that's where the problem's started.0
For some reason i can't wrap my head around new recipes, because my water is either to high on TDS, or too low on calcium and could lead to corrosion of my machine (based on the BH calculators)
That's why i thought of buying Third Wave Water - but i have no idea how to calculate based on whats in there formulas and i am scared that, if i just blindly use them i get something way off.
Also some people reported that they're usually dilluting their TWW Water (?), which I'd love to do as well, but still want to be in an ideal spot.

Is there some kind soul that can help me?

Thank you for reading this, as you can probably tell im super confused and also as you can probably tell English isn't my native language, so i hope you can get why im trying to ask here!
Also have a good week-(end) and also wherever you are in the world - great Easter Holidays!

Loreo123 wrote:Now im in Germany and noticed, after some unforeseen events - that the distilled water that's advertised here, isn't "real" distilled water and also pretty bad for your health.

I suspect that it's de-ionized water, which would be perfectly fine to be used as a stand-in for distilled when making remineralized water for coffee. (Edit addition: provided it is sold and labeled as suitable for human consumption -- see oksako's post further down this thread.) You will find plenty of online claims that de-ionized or distilled is bad for your health because of its lack of mineral, which of course does not apply when you use it to make coffee -- even if you did not remineralize it before brewing you will have plenty of minerals in the coffee. If the label says that it's purified or distilled with minerals added, then maybe best to steer clear of it because you don't know what minerals were added.

Loreo123 wrote:For some reason i can't wrap my head around new recipes, because my water is either to high on TDS, or too low on calcium and could lead to corrosion of my machine (based on the BH calculators)

Don't assume that your water is corrosive based on these oversimplified calculators. You can have zero calcium and low TDS in water that is not corrosive. If it has very low KH and high chloride, then it would be corrosive.

The water you linked above has a very low KH, but also has low chloride and low sulfate, so should not be a corrosion risk, especially if you mineralize it with a little sodium bicarbonate or potassium bicarbonate. It would be fine to use in those BH recipes - - would give you only 10 mg/L higher GH and and 4 mg/L higher KH that you would have if using distilled --- not enough to make a difference.

Loreo123 wrote:Also some people reported that they're usually dilluting their TWW Water (?), which I'd love to do as well, but still want to be in an ideal spot.

You could do that with RO, de-ionized, or distilled, or with that low mineral water you referenced above. And you would be fine using half the recommended amount (e.g, putting a 2 liter dose packet into 4 liters of water). For espresso machine use I think you should use the espresso rather than classic formula (it is more machine-healthy because it has no chloride ion and a little more bicarbonate alkalinity).

Loreo123 wrote: That's why i thought of buying Third Wave Water - but i have no idea how to calculate based on whats in there formulas and i am scared that, if i just blindly use them i get something way off.
Also some people reported that they're usually dilluting their TWW Water (?), which I'd love to do as well, but still want to be in an ideal spot.

I was going to make a post about Third Wave Water - classic profile.


First, years ago, on this forum, a TWW founder stated that the classic formula per gallon packet is

1.5grams total

1.1 grams magnesium sulfate
.3 grams calcium citrate
.1g sodium chloride

From 1.1g / gallon magnesium sulfate, assuming heptahydrate, I calculate (novice so could be wrong) that is 118 ppm (mg/L) hardness

From .3grams calcium citrate, based on its molecular weight of 498.4, I calculate (again novice) an additional 15.9 ppm (mg/L) hardness

for ~134 mg/L hardness Many have cited 150 mg/L hardness in reviews of it, so I am close I guess

I have no understanding to calculate its alkalinity, but Coffee Ad Astra, estimated it as 43 ppm (mg/L) equivalent CaCO3 in citric acid. It is in middle of this article, in a section on Third Wave Water: https://coffeeadastra.com/2018/12/16/wa ... xtraction/

So if my calculations are right and Coffee Ad Astra is right then

134 ppm Hardness 88% magnesium and 12% calcium

43 mg/L Alkalinity.

Again, I was going to make a post on this asking if my maths and Coffee Ad Astra are right. So, if anyone can confirm please do.

Acavia wrote:I was going to make a post about Third Wave Water - classic profile.

Yes, this is for classic, and I think the OP plans to use it for espresso as well as pourover, so hope he goes with the espresso profile. It is roughly similar except that it has no chloride and has additional bicarbonate alkalinity.

Acavia wrote:Again, I was going to make a post on this asking if my maths and Coffee Ad Astra are right. So, if anyone can confirm please do.

You did a good job with the maths, but missed one chemistry wrinkle:

Calcium citrate is Ca₃(C₆H₅O₇)₂ , so one mole (498.4 gram of anhydrous calcium citrate) has 3 moles of calcium. So when converting the mmol/L value of the TWW calcium citrate, which you did correctly, you then needed to multiply that by 3 to get the mmol/L of calcium. So your value is low by a factor of 3, and instead of 15.9 ppm your calculated value should be 47.7 ppm of calcium hardness (both in units of CaCO3 equivalence) . Total hardness then would be in the neighborhood of 166 ppm CaCO3 equivalent. That's about where Jonathan Gagne (Coffee Ad Astra) put it on his chart.


And alkalinity is another wrinkle, and a really messy one that involves how you define that term. Water chemists generally define the terms: "alkalinity" or "general alkalinity" or "total alkalinity" to be the same as "M Alkalinity", where the methylorange indicator changes color, down at a pH of around 4.2 - 4.5 where all bicarbonate in the sample has reacted with acid. This works nicely for natural water where the buffering is all due to carbonate and bicarbonate. All the KH, total alkalinity, and carbonate hardness drop test kits on the market measure to this end point, and the standard lab methods for measuring total alkalinity in water use this end point.

TWW is unusual because it has that calcium citrate which has two citrate anions that can each can buffer up to three acid (H+) ions. If you calculate the total buffering capacity down to a pH around 2 where all the of the calcium citrate is converted to citric acid, that would be the 43 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent value that Jonathan Gagné calculated. (In that blog text, he does discuss his calculation nicely in the paragraph where he says "I must confess, I am not sure I placed the Third Wave Water points on the right position of the "total alkalinity" axis.") To my mind his calculation puts it too high by a factor of two or so, but certainly not worth quibbling over, especially since it's such a messy issue.

For the espresso formula, you have that 150 mg/gallon potassium bicarbonate, which gives you another 20 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent of conventional bicarbonate alkalinity on top of whatever the calcium citrate provides.

Hello together,

I have exactly the same confusion going on in my head and I was wondering if HB would have an answer for this. So I came here and start browsing the Water section and found this thread as the first/latest one, what a great coincidence.

So same story here. I will buy a BDB (Sage) soon and becaus of you, HB, I already started to think about with which water to feed my machine so that I never have to worry about scale and corrosion. So my idea so far is rpavlis recipe because it seems very very easy and not harmful to your body.

However, I also can only find deionised water which is confusingly sold as 'distilled water' here in Germany. But in the forum I am not sure what is referred to by RO, de stilled or clarified water.
The labels of those 'distilled water' containers always say not drinkable, only for batteries etc. Mr. Google told me, that it is not drinkable because of a lack of bakteria/virus removal during the deionisation and the risk of infectious disease. Also, in one source, they wrote that the deionised water could be contaminated with chemical substances used for the deionisation. I think the risk of soaking minerals out of your body can be ignored, because I won't anyway drink large quantities of the water purely and the espresso created with the water will contain rpavlis additive and minerals from the coffee/milk, so I think nothing to worry, especially when drinking 'small' amounts (2-3 drinks a day).

I am also confused whether I can use that 'distilled water' or not. I also can find bidistilled / doubly distilled water, not sure what that is. I don't know if that is better? It is almost the same price.

Regarding the bacteria/virus residuals/bacterial infection risk I think that all of these concerns may be eliminated during the process of brewing with at least 85°C water and steaming with at least 120°C water. To be clear, I am not a chemist and I also don't have anything to do with medical science. I just think that 'nothing' which may be contained in that water should survive those temperatures. But still, I am not sure and worried...
Regarding the chemical residuals I am very worried, or is this nonsense?
And what do you know about that bidistilled water?

I am happy that I can joint his thread with my anxieties about the 'destilled water' sold here in Germany, because I am sure you have a quality answer/solution for this issue (?).

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and respond, looking really forward to your opinions/experiences/expertise.

oksako wrote:The labels of those 'destilled water' containers always say not drinkable, only for batteries etc. Mr. Google told me, that it is not drinkable because of a lack of bakteria/virus removal during the deionisation and the risk of infectious disease. Also, in one source, they wrote that the deionised water could be contaminated with chemical substances used for the deionisation.

Excellent and important point. Any water that is not sold as drinking water should not be used in your coffee water recipes. It may be less than 1 ppm, fine to put in a steaming iron or a car battery, but have contaminants or microbes that make it unsuitable for drinking. Look for bottled water that is clearly intended for human consumption. In the US there are labeling regulations (21CFR 165.110) for drinking water that has been purified by distillation, RO, or de-ionization, and might just be labeled "purified" or "demineralized" when one or more of those methods are used. The gotcha here is that it may be labeled 'purified drinking water' then in finer print something like 'with minerals added for taste'.

Things do seem very different outside of US when it comes to finding a good source of purified drinking water for making coffee or beer. We've seen reports along this line from Denmark and from Isreal. Hopefully someone from Germany will chime in about where they get their purified or low mineral recipe water.

oksako wrote:But still, I am not sure and worried...
Regarding the chemical residuals I am very worried, or is this nonsense?
And what do you know about that bidestilled water?

For making coffee water you really don't need anything highly purified, and If labeled unsuitable for human consumption, I think it best to steer clear of it even if bi-distilled. Pharmaceutical grade sterile distilled water would be OK but way too expensive.

Thanks for your reply. Today I went to a dyi market and they had no idea where I could get distilled/purified water which is drinkable...
Next week I will try to call a couple shops I could find which are specialized to selling water..so let's see what their advice will be.

Maybe in the next few days someone from HB will share a solution which addresses this issue. I also contacted someone on HB who is from Germany and created a thread 3 years ago telling he is using RO water. So maybe he also had to find a solution for this and shares it. Hope he/she will react.

Really appreciate your thoughts. Thank you!

Best regards,
Okan

First of all, thanks for all the replies.

homeburrero wrote: You could do that with RO, de-ionized, or distilled, or with that low mineral water you referenced above. And you would be fine using half the recommended amount (e.g, putting a 2 liter dose packet into 4 liters of water). For espresso machine use I think you should use the espresso rather than classic formula (it is more machine-healthy because it has no chloride ion and a little more bicarbonate alkalinity).

Yes, I decided to go for the espresso profile 1 Dose into 4 Liter alternative.
I think this'll work out just fine and im pretty excited - Thanks!

BUT - there's still my problem with the "pour over water".
Because my question to you people is, whether you think just using the TWW espresso profile works there aswell? Would I have to adjust the dose?

Or should I go for the classic TWW formula solely for pour over?
The problem for that scenario might be, that the Classic Formula is only available for 3,785 liters.. Do you think diluting it in 5l of the water that I linked above would give me tasty results as well?


Thank you & im also feeling way more confident in the whole water subject now!

Loreo123 wrote: ... - there's still my problem with the "pour over water".
Because my question to you people is, whether you think just using the TWW espresso profile works there aswell? Would I have to adjust the dose?

Or should I go for the classic TWW formula solely for pour over?
The problem for that scenario might be, that the Classic Formula is only available for 3,785 liters.. Do you think diluting it in 5l of the water that I linked above would give me tasty results as well?

You can easily use that espresso profile for pourover. It has more bicarbonate alkalinity than the classic, but not enough to dull the flavor of your brew. You can try it diluted (a 2 liter packet in 4 liters of water) and try it full strength -- If you can't taste a difference in pourover or cupping, just use the diluted one.

The classic 1 gallon formula in 5 liters should also taste fine in my opinion. I still would not recommend it for espresso machine use because of the chloride and low bicarbonate alkalinity.

homeburrero wrote: The classic 1 gallon formula in 5 liters should also taste fine in my opinion. I still would not recommend it for espresso machine use because of the chloride and low bicarbonate alkalinity.

Yes, i guess i'll have to try it. So Pour-Over is still going to be a journey haha!
And yep, my espresso machine is solely going to run with the Espresso Formula - do you think going with 2x Espresso Sachets into 5 Liters is fine as well or could that be problematic for my machine? (I kind want to experiment with the mixes (is that a word?) and see if theres a "gold spot" for me!)

Also i'm sorry for asking so many questions tho - im aware you're not google lol!
But thanks anyways!

Cheers