Water

[Bechet]

I think it was in one of the Scottish Freedom threads thhat we touched briefly on water quality - buying excellet tasting Scottish water - and this bit isn't relevant to that debate, but ........ in the main, I use Scottish Mountain Water as supplied by Sainsbury. This water is slightly hard and leaves a calcium deposit in the kettle - not much but it does build in time. It is slightly alkaline. Due to reasons beyond my control and a fuck up on my part, I'm currently stocked with English water from Tesco and it is slightly acidic. Rather than drink the dissolved calcium deposits, I thought to de-scale my kettle. Everyone laughed at the suggestion, comparing the slight scaling in my kettle to their own, with heavy scaling due to local tap water. Anyway, I did the job - lovely shiny kettle again.

But - the quality of the tea and coffee I use seems suddenlly to have leapt ten or twelve levels of quality. Using either Scottish and English water in a clean kettle allows the flavour of my teas and coffees to leap out at me. They are just so gorgeous again - all for the want of de-scaling my kettle! I would not have thought the improvement possible, but there it is

De-scale your kettles, guys!

 

[Tall_Paul]

Why do you buy bottled water Carl? Is the water in the neck of your woods really that bad?

I thought you had a filter on your supply or am I imagining things?

(So many questions!)

 

[jaycey]

Although I no longer keep a Coral Reef Aquarium I still have my plumbed in Reverse Osmosis unit that is a absolute must for reef keeping.
The water in London is no where near good enough to maintain living corals due to high levels of nitrates & phosphates (amongst others)

The RO unit removes nearly everything including calcium, I now use it for drinking water and in the Espresso machine. There is hardly any scale build up in my machine

 

[dantheman1]

Re: RE: Water

Although I no longer keep a Coral Reef Aquarium I still have my plumbed in Reverse Osmosis unit that is a absolute must for reef keeping.
The water in London is no where near good enough to maintain living corals due to high levels of nitrates & phosphates (amongst others)

The RO unit removes nearly everything including calcium, I now use it for drinking water and in the Espresso machine. There is hardly any scale build up in my machine

I used to keep a reef too pal. I did read somewhere though that it's not good for drinking though. I have no idea why but it might be worth checking just in case?

I used to think it was brilliant in Scotch tbh

 

[jaycey]

Although I no longer keep a Coral Reef Aquarium I still have my plumbed in Reverse Osmosis unit that is a absolute must for reef keeping.
The water in London is no where near good enough to maintain living corals due to high levels of nitrates & phosphates (amongst others)

The RO unit removes nearly everything including calcium, I now use it for drinking water and in the Espresso machine. There is hardly any scale build up in my machine

I used to keep a reef too pal. I did read somewhere though that it's not good for drinking though. I have no idea why but it might be worth checking just in case?

I used to think it was brilliant in Scotch tbh

You're quite right Dan, but I would guess that the RO water makes up only around 10% of my fluid intake (89% down the pub )
So yeah, definitely not to be used as a single source of water but worth using for cutting down on the impurities in London water and drastically reducing scale in the Espresso machine.

 

[Bechet]

Why do you buy bottled water Carl? Is the water in the neck of your woods really that bad?

I thought you had a filter on your supply or am I imagining things?

(So many questions!)

I use bottled water - £1.50 for 4 x 2l bottles - because it tastes sweet and our tap water tastes of water treatment chemicals (horrible). The bottled water does not destroy the taste of my fine teas and coffees - both single estates. Also, it only scales up my kettle slightly.

I have a softener but as above, one should not drink RO water.