I live in a hard water area. Until now, I’ve been using a standard water filter like Brita, which has worked fine, but I could never achieve the clarity I was looking for in my coffee.

So last week, I dipped my toe in the world of water recipes. I got myself a zero water filter, read up about remineralisation and made a few litres of coffee brewing water.

I wasn’t sure what to expect or if it would make a difference, but man was I surprised! The difference is insane. It was the missing piece to tasty coffee that I had been searching for for so long. Needless to say, I’m sold now and theres no going back for me.

What concerns me us how much of a pain in the ass it is. I have to have a bottle for the mineral water concentrate, a filter jug for the distillation and another jug for the remineralised water. I don’t know if I want all that hassle every day for the rest of my life.

So the question now is how can I streamline this?

I live in a rented city apartment, so space is limited and I can’t make any big changes like under-sink ro installations. I have looked at countertop ro units, but they’re very pricey

Is there anyone else here who makes their own water? How do you manage this? Any advice for someone who is just starting out?

  • anytimesoon@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Thank you!

    Yes, it sounds like quite a big piece of work for a rented space…

    That is the dream setup, though.

    What do you do with the waste water for the ro process?

          • AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            What a yucky/scammy/click baitty website vibe, what’s with the “click here to reveal your secret discount” and the forced subscriptions &auto billing on filters?

              • AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                1 month ago

                It also just appears that you can’t change the RO membrane? Can’t tell because it’s purposely vague, but looks like if you don’t get the subcription you don’t get any filter to start with and have to pay an additional $90?

                Edit: its is RO but I don’t see the RO membrane as one of the replaceable filters.

                Edit 2: found the RO membrane, it’s $60 every 2 years so yearly cost will be $120 ($90 for filter + $60/2 for RO Membrane)

                • brian@programming.dev
                  1·
                  1 month ago

                  the amazon one came with one of each filter. not sure about directly from them but I imagine it’s the same?

          • anytimesoon@piefed.socialOPEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            That’s actually the unit I’ve been looking it. It’s pretty expensive, so I’m glad to hear you are getting good use out of it.

            Would you recommend it? Is there anything about it you would change?

            • brian@programming.dev
              1·
              1 month ago

              nothing major.

              we have pretty hard water here, it was killing one of the generic charcoal pitcher filters within a month. the filters in this one haven’t had any problems by the time they are scheduled to be replaced.

              a couple possibly annoying things:

              • the reservoir is on the back, so it’s not great against a wall under cabinets. they have a little cart you can buy explicitly to help with that, but it felt silly so I just put it somewhere else
              • you can’t just top up the reservoir, you have to wait for it to finish, dump it out, then refill. annoying when there’s just half a tank left. I end up just trying to use an entire pitcher by dumping it into kettle/espresso machine whenever I use any water so reservoir is either entirely full or empty. afaik true of any of them that aren’t plumbed in.
              • don’t love the fact that I’m locked in to the manufacturers’ filters. there don’t seem to be any third party ones available if they ever discontinue them