Hi.
I'm Pedro from Coffee Parts And today, I'm here with Paul Asquith
Looking at water filtration.
What is it?
How does this affect your espresso and your coffee machine?
Paul, thank you for coming back.
It's great to be back.
The last video we did with you on pressure profiling was awesome.
I learned so much
I thought bring you back to look at water and how that affects the coffee machine.
But more importantly, for those that don't know you,
you've been in coffee for a very long time.
In a lot of areas of coffee Do you want to just give it a quick 30 seconds bio.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So I guess I started in coffee as a barista, like everyone seems to start.
Yeah. Most people start as a barista at some stage,
but for
the most part of my career, I've been a coffee trainer
for Glory Jeans, for Grinders for Ona Coffee. For Seven Miles coffee roasters,
and also a little bit of a stint at Jose Coffee up in Newcastle.
Yeah, but you know, in my time I've also competed, judge
on the 2012 Australasian Grand Barista championship
and yeah, just focused on I'm making good coffee all the time.
So you sort of know you talk about.
It a little bit, hopefully.
So bringing it down to water
I feel like this is a common question we get all the time, especially
with cafes.
The roasters tend to be looking after a fair bit.
More and more with homes
getting really high and espresso machines that I wanted to understand
how that water affects the machine and to how it affects the espresso.
So want to give a bit of a rundown.
Why would a filtration in espresso is needed?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, the biggest thing with home machines these days is that,
as you said, that progression of technology
we're starting to see more and more of that commercial technology
work its way into the home.
And that means more stainless steel parts, more things, a potentially corrosive
and potential problems for your machine in the future.
So filtration really plays a massive role in keeping your coffee machine humming along
As much as well as it possibly could be without expensive repair bills.
Now, the biggest thing for filtration is to
balance the water so that you don't get scale, so you don't get corrosion.
And that's called the LSI or the langalier
saturation index.
So that is a little bit confusing, a little bit high, high technology.
But it basically means you want to balance what's called chlorides in the water
and that's a naturally occurring thing in Australian water. Yep.
Against the carbon and hardness in the water.
Yeah.
OK, if you've got too many chlorides in the water,
you're going to get corrosion in your machine.
If you got too many carbon hardness, too much carbon and hardness in the water,
you're going to end up with scale. Yeah.
So the basic balancing is around about one part
chlorides to two parts carbon and hardness.
Yeah.
And you should have a machine that doesn't build scale.
Or corrosive. Right.
When it comes to scale, what it really does
is different state to state if we talk about Australia.
Yeah.
And what we see here in Sydney is very different to Perth.
And when it comes to scale or hardness, not only as block up the machine
quite quickly, if not control, but also affects the coffee.
Like you'd probably know a lot better than me,
but I've always found the higher the scale, the more chalky the coffee is.
Yep. And the, the lower it is.
If it's just to say 150, the coffee has no body in the machine.
From an electrical standpoint, the senses start not picking up, etc.
So there is a sweet spot to be in,
not only from a machine side but from a coffee side.
That's the very elementary version of it.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, what you're talking to is that the TDS
and so general TDS of around about 90 to 110 parts
per million is a really safe place to be for really great tasting coffee
that sit around the country you're not going to be able to just nail
that number straight away in Melbourne, Melbourne's very soft water
generally right down around the fifties and the six TDS
but if you move around the country up to Brisbane, you get a higher TDS
and as you go further
west to Adelaide and Perth you're getting much higher TDS. So
the approach is going to be different
in every state and in every part of the country that you go.
Yeah, and that's one thing that's sometimes hard for people to understand is
it's not what filter for my machine, it really is what filter for the water.
Absolutely you have.
And different waters will require and different outcomes will require
different filters.
But talking about coffee specifically, but if it was in the ice machine,
it's very different to a coffee machine because hot that's cold
have different issues and then drinking water is tiny a little bit different?
Again, you don't have to worry about the scale side of things as much.
Yeah, but
so what are the three main things in water that people have to kind of know
and look at?
Yeah. So I mean, the biggest
the biggest thing is making sure there's no sediments in the water.
So you're going to have some form of filtration generally a carbon block
that removes any impurities, anything that's floating around in the water.
And that is biggest sentiment's maybe maybe down to kind of
five micron or even some micro level, making sure there's nothing
floating around in the water.
Now, that's part of what builds up, builds some of the TDS in the water.
But the biggest thing that TDS is built on is the carbon and hardness.
So that comes in in a different form.
Carbon and hardness comes from bicarbonate in the water or magnesium in the water
and those things are going to be the things that create flavor,
but they're also going to be the things that form scale. Yep.
So the biggest, biggest one is that carbon and harness that if there is too much
carbon hardness, you're going to get really high extraction.
And as you say, that's chalky, over
extracted sort of flavors and if that's not high enough,
then you're going to start to want for more.
Yeah, you're not going to be extracting
that coffee as well as you possibly could. So,
you know,
in in some states like Sydney, it's perfect.
In other states you might have to work at building that carbon and hardness
a little bit into the water with a certain type of filtration.
You know, I'll say yes.
And then in other, other states like WA, you may have been turned to
reverse osmosis, which historically is probably not
something that people look at in a home setting. Yep.
But again, as we progress in the technology of machines in our homes,
we're going to have to start
to look at better filtration to protect that investment.
With reverse osmosis for coffee specifically, it only needs to be a blend.
you know, there is reverse osmosis that basically strips the water to bare
and then you don't have
the minerals in there for things to register on the coffee machine side
And more coffee side to bring that body in.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, you can with the reverse osmosis, you're
stripping everything out of the water, bringing it down to very low TDS.
You put that into the coffee machine.
The coffee machine is just going to sit there and do nothing.
As you say, it's not going to heat because it's not going
to have anything to create that water connectivity
so we're going to have to look at re minimizing the water.
And there are a couple of ways there are cartridges
you can put on to build the water a little bit.
There are definitely RO systems out there that you can actually blend with
some of that carbon and hardness and also some of the water
that's coming directly from the tap in just to build it to a safe
high enough level to create that nice, nice water form for a coffee.
Basically,
Nothing is the PH water
And how does that affect coffee? Yeah.
So I mean, the PH in Australia is very fairly level.
It's kind of neutral, but if for whatever reason
you're using the wrong filtration and it becomes acidic,
then you're not going to have that extraction again.
It's just sort of it's a sliding scale like the carbon and hardness.
If you have your PH too low, you're not going to get great extractions,
you're going to end up with relatively acidic coffee.
Yeah, and it's you know, if you, if you go over, you know,
well every, you know, 7.4, 7.5
and start to get up, up into the eights, of PH
then you start to get that soapness
start to lose that clarity of the acidity
and you start to get more of that extraction,
you're also probably going to see some,
some slightly syrupy looking espresso shots.
Yeah, but not necessarily in a good.
Way
Yep, I was thinking in that.
So looking at those three things, TDS, PH and carbon hardness,
that sort of builds the water to a certain degree.
There is more, but they're the three common things.
Absolutely.
Then we can look at the technologies of what's
available through a filter perspective to control those three things.
And one thing to note, we're talking about five micron early or some micron
coffee machines that the group head have an injector
gently point eight mm, and sometimes some La Marzocco`s point six mm.
Can we have 12mm on some machines.
And if you have
water that especially find in areas
that have a lot of construction going on, you tend to get particles a bit bigger.
You can't see it visually, but they're a bit bigger
and they can block that injector.
So having an area that has a lot of construction, having a pre-filter
or having a five micron is not a bad thing because it doesn't block the filter.
Absolutely.
We can get into that when we talk about technologies yeah.
So I mean, as a, you know, kind of alluded to,
there are a couple of different technologies.
The basic one is carbon filtration, and that's what most people know.
Yeah.
You know, we're talking five micron, carbon filtration.
Sometimes I go down a little bit smaller into sub micron filtration.
And, you know, if you've seen a general house filter, you might see
a 10 or a 20 micron
filtration to kind of be a pre filter coming into the house.
So there's a few a few of those things out there.
So we start with something like this,
which is called a fiber dime, but it is carbon filtration.
It's a it's a new technology of carbon filtration.
So it
gives you the ability to
basically strip most of the stuff out of the water.
These come in a five micron or a sub micron and it's basically protecting you
from that level of sediment,
making sure there's nothing floating around in the water
and your water is going to be relatively clean in order
for you going into the coffee machine.
Yeah, this is really good in those places like Sydney, places
that have really nice water that's relatively balanced.
You don't need to play around too much.
Yeah, it does come with a warning, though, with something like this one
with the sub micron, if you're in places with silica in the water, yep.
Such as around Victoria. Yep.
Then some micron can be a little bit problematic because the silica actually
blocks up those those pores in the filtration
a lot faster than they would in other areas.
They'll be better off with a 5 micron. 5 micron, absolutely.
Yeah.
The next step is what we call water softening. Yep.
You might hear of it as an exchange.
And that's where the the water itself is coming in with certain type of minerals
and it's turning it into positive minerals for coffee.
So I might be adding, you know, in some cases might be adding magnesium
or carbon hardness and might be coating the bad minerals.
with good minerals. Yeah.
And you know, you can
basically have water that's a little bit more balanced,
a little bit higher carbon hardness to balance out
sometimes those chlorides in the water and have safe water. Yep.
This is also good for areas where you want to build that carbon and hardness
Just a little bit more to get more of that flavor.
Yeah.
Normally in a filter like this, you start to having on the filter here like a bypass,
you have to start measuring the water, working out how far you want to strip it.
Absolutely. Yeah.
And you know, when we start getting into filters like this,
it really is a good idea to reach out to people to get your water tested.
There are there are places around that will do the water testing.
Generally a pool shop will will do you water testing.
Or an aquarium that sells fish.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
They're in every suburb.
So yeah, they'll be able to test your water
and it's a good idea to have a little bit of an educated decision
when you're going into these filtration because
I can be a little bit more expensive
and there are some other factors in using a filtration like this
that will change the lifespan of a filter
if your water is to too hard and it's doing a lot of work,
then it's not going to last as long as the water.
For those are concerned with that.
You can buy flow meters that count how much water has gone through the filter.
So instead of guessing every six or 12 months,
you know exactly how much water, and a little bit
more scientific approach to when to change a filter rather than an educated guess.
Absolutely. Yeah.
And the last medium really tends to be all RO
RO. Yeah.
So ,RO, you know, that is the the big shebang water filter.
It's got a membrane that the water passes through
and that's going to strip basically everything up to around
about 90, 95 to 98% of what's in the water, out of the water.
Then what you're doing is you're building on top of that water with carbon and hardness
or other, other mineral additives to build it up to somewhere
that you want it to be. Know.
So, you know RO systems generally can be a little bit more costly,
but you do generally have a greater control over the water.
And certainly if you're out there targeting flavor and really want
to make sure your espresso is the best
you possibly can be and RO system actually not a bad way to go?
Yeah.
We actually were back in MICE when the world barista comp was on
whatever pure to set up the two RO systems
to get a spot on 100 TDS for every competitor.
Yeah, it was actually the biggest learning curve.
I've seen the whole competition
Just running stable water across everywhere.
It was a crazy rig that they built.
Yeah.
And it's, you know, it's awesome when you know that
the water's the same for in a competition setting like that.
Yeah.
You know that whatever the competitor's coming with is
what they can do with them.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's no changes, no differences in the water.
It's all to do with them and their coffee.
Yeah.
So it really is a leveler
and it really is a good way to kind of sort out the playing field.
You tend to see also in franchisors that they want
their coffee to taste the same all across the country.
So they want the water to be the same because that's one
big factor affecting coffee and people, you know, like in particularly taste.
So it's really important for them to be able to replicate that taste
in every state.
And we're talking about Australia, but this could be anywhere in the world.
Absolutely anywhere in the world, you know, and I mean if you,
if you look at world, world well sort of stage
Australian
water compared to other parts of the world is relatively soft.
You know, we talk about WBY having hard water but it's not really hard
water in comparison to other parts of the world.
The funny thing is in Australia the biggest thing we're combating
is those chlorides in the water and that is
that's always been a
a confusion for many of the world's coffee machine manufacturers
because they build their coffee machines generally for a world world setting.
But Australia is through some pretty, pretty nasty curveballs at them
in the last, you know, 15 years when it comes to the type of water
going through those machines and the technology, again as we progressed
into stainless steel boilers and stuff like that,
then we started to see those failures that we hadn't seen
for so many years of plenty making in Australia.
The stainless still really did change and now that's really become quite common now.
So that's when I mean most machines that have stainless boilers send a test kit
when you buy it, because I really want people to start thinking water
and it don't send the water, filter it because obviously it's different
depending where it's going, but they're really puting
I mean if you buy La Marzocco it says you need to test for the water.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
You know, they generally say a certain amount of chlorides,
anything over that, then that boiler is not going to be warranted.
Well, yeah.
And that, you know, obviously is an expensive investment,
so you don't want to be playing around with something that's.
The end result.
If you get better coffee and.
Absolutely. Yes, the icing on the cake.
Absolutely.
You know, I feel like it's right term, But the end result of the espresso.
Yeah,
definitely.
I mean, you know,
if you're going to be spending that much money on a coffee machine
and, you know, arguably you're probably going to be spending that much money
on a grinder, you want to make sure that everything is good and water
filtration is one of those things that can really make sure your water is
going to look out for the coffee machine and look after espresso.
So on that note.
If you got a question for Paul or for me,
hit us up on the comments below I know whater is a bit of rabbit hole.
We can go into many different questions, but feel free to hit us up
in the comments.
We'll get back to you.
And Paul, thank you so much for coming in again.
No worries. Thanks for that.
I've I've been
to a few more videos with you because your level of knowledge is insane.
That's fun being here. Thank you.
And like always if these videos brought you value,
please see that thumbs up and if you haven't yet, please subscribe.
Thank you and see you on the next video.