ionized water

[nosmo4u]

Does anyone have exprience using ionized water when brewing their favorite homeroast? I've heard it makes a great cup of coffee since you can control the ph of the H2O. Any input would be helpful

[John F]

My first thought is to check the insanely long water FAQ and see if it is mentioned.
http://www.big-rick.com/coffee/waterfaq.html

My second thought is to make sure it's safe to run in whatever device you are going to run it in (if it's not press, pourover cone, etc..)

Test it and see what you think...

I am spending the day with my water quality guy tomorrow and will ask him a few questions...he is not a coffee guy but he has run a lot of water treatment to commercial coffee set ups so if there is anything interesting I'll post back.

John F

[garybt3]

I found this tidbit on a quick google search for you:

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/ionbunk.html

Gary

[mp]

The absolutely clearest water is distilled ( o - 5 parts per million (ppm) contaminants).  Distilled water is slightly alkaline in nature.  The second most cleanest is reverse osmosis ( > 5 and < 35 ppm).  RO water is slightly acidic.  The best cup of coffee is arguably made with water that is slightly acidic and about 100 - 150 ppm contaminants.  If you run your machine with distilled or RO water you will find you can go years without doing a de-scale.  If you want a good cup of coffee you may try mixing some RO and carbon filtered water ... I use 4 parts RO with 1 part filtered.  To my taste it puts just enough solids in the water to make an impact on the taste while keeping the scale build up inside the boiler and HX to a minimum.

Ionized water is big in Japan and parts of Korea.  Generally not too well received here and you can make your own device to produce slightly acidic water or slightly alkaline water for a lot less than what they are asking for those Ionizer Units.

Hope that helps.

[John F]

My water guy said basically the same stuff as the link Garybt3 posted. 

[kwksilver]

"ionized" as in marketing and DI/distilled have diddly squat to do with one another. 
"ionized" water is marketing. the amount of dissociation Kw style is purely dependent on Kw itself and all other ion species present. The "ionizing" they speak of is submitting it to electrical (and therefore also magnetic fields). That effect goes away the second the field goes away...

Ph your water to where you like it the old way. Remove the species who's taste you don't dig on. I like hard water, so I am cool with that. I hate metallic tasting water (thats why this one doesn't like brewing boilers.), so I avoid that.

An ionizer won't make it alkaline or acidic. I promise. it will do nothing. It is not possible to change the combined dissociation equilibria in solution via current. Adding and removing species... that's all one can do. And "ionizers" don't do either.


Hope this didn't tick anyone off. I did not mean it like that.

Felix