Coffee costs

Nobody has yet mentioned water. What are you filling your Nespresso machine with? Hard Thames, filtered by the machine in my case. Or bottled Buxton? Like tea, water will make a difference.

I’m having to put bottled water through my espresso machine at the moment, as our tap water is too hard (even after filtering) and would probably wreck my machine in short order. Tesco Ashbeck in 5L bottles for about £1.50. It’s mineral content is optimal for taste and machine preservation. I’m not happy with the plastic waste though, so I’m looking for a more sustainable solution.  Possibly a zero water jug then either remineralising it or mixing it with tap water to get the right hardness.

I have soft water, I don’t think I’d put spring water in my machine because I think it would start scaling up.

https://lalicocoffee.co.uk/

https://lalicocoffee.co.uk/

Did a double take at their prices until I noticed it was per 100g! Still very reasonable though at sub £20 a kilo. Their back story reads like a (long) novel though, I gave up half way through! Might give them a try, love to try new roasts.

The type of water does make a difference, where I grew up in the Thames Valley the extremely hard water (even filtered) would destroy the gaggia machine and left a harsh taste.

Where I live in Manchester the water is so soft that I can still see my reflection in the bottom of a ten year old kettle!

I used to work in a studio space with a coffee roasting company (Heart and Graft) and they reckon Tescos Aspen Spring still mineral water was the best. I tried it and it was definitely nicer.

What tosh – why do people spout this sort of nonsense? Did they hear it once, then just repeat it again and again believing it must be true?

Is this your first STW coffee thread? 😜

Tescos Aspen Spring still mineral water

Tesco Ashbeck. Recommended by the distributor for my machine, my local coffee roaster and on a load of coffee forums. It’s mineral content and alkalinity are smack in the middle of the recommended range.  it makes great tasting coffee and won’t damage your machine.  Water can be too soft as well as too hard.  You need a certain mineral level for good extraction – without it coffee can taste dull and muted.  Zero mineral water (distilled water for example) as well as making awful coffee is corrosive in machines. But too much mineral content and you get scaling which can damage a machine.  Lots of bottled mineral water is no good for coffee, but some like Tesco Ashbeck and Waitrose Lockhills is perfect. I use Ashbeck and do a light descale with citric acid every 3 or 4 months.

theotherjonvFull Member
I went from STW to email and my local roaster has randomly sent me a link to this in their latest mail out

https://www.redber.co.uk/blogs/guides/7715279-storing-your-coffee

They’re my local too – we go through a 1kg bag of Caffe Francais ~ every 3 weeks in a bean to cup – they cost £18/kgm, but normally buy 3 at a time to save on shipping.

Does scaling really damage a machine? Surely anywhere the water gets to, the descaler solution does also?

I have liquid rock for water and descale mine once every month or so. After that descaler solution has been through the machine, i use it to descale my kettle and it returns that to sparkling clean bare metal also.  I’ve had my previous machine fully apart and there was no visible evidence of any buildup.

Water – (I’m in London) – filtered with Brita Purity Quell ST

(theres a semi-domestic version – also does the chilled water from our fridge after I bypassed the internal filter on it.)

@multi21 if you are descaling that often, I’m sure you’re OK.  The issue with espresso machines is very narrow pipes which can get blocked easily as well as the boiler, solenoid valves etc.

If your water is OK and you are descaling you won’t have an issue. Just lobbing tap water in if you are in a hard water area can wreck a machine though.

You can even damage it if you descale too infrequently as instead of removing a thin coating of scale, you can dislodge little lumps of it which can work their way into places they shouldn’t be and cause issues. There are companies who will strip down and fix it if it gets to that stage, but that’s going to cost a couple of hundred quid at least,  so best to prevent it in the first place.

There are plenty of online calculators which will predict how likely your water is to scale. You usually need to tap in data from your water suppliers website or you can buy a cheap water testing kit.

At the risk of being…erm…roasted

You could get cheaper pods.

Starbucks pods in various bean and roasts options are regularly available for £2.75 a tube, just Google search to see which supermarkets have offers on.

L’Or espresso pods are often available in quantity for around 25p per pod. The stronger of these are quite good.

I know plenty of Roasters

I’ll get my coat on the way out 🙂