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c CTI Class

The world in two bottles

Here’s the recipe to get there:
Our water recipe was and is a useful starting point
for building water, giving you a good chance of success Ingredients:
when brewing up coffee at home. For those willing to Baking Soda - NaHCO3, Sodium Bicarbonate, Bi-
dive a little deeper, we can get far more specific. carb (not baking powder)
The math can get rather complicated so we’ll spare Epsom Salts - MgSO4, Magnesium Sulfate (don’t
the details until another time. The motivating factor worry about “do not eat” labelling. We’re working with
here was to get the two variables (buffer and magne- miniscule amounts, diluted 1000x, and boiling the
sium) into separate concentrates that are easily added water afterwards.)
to distilled water. This means you can create any brew- Deionised/Distilled/Ultra-pure water (don’t
ing water with some combination of the two. Kind of worry about “not for drinking” label. This is to prevent
like an etch-a-sketch for brewing water! people drinking too much ultra pure water. We’re add-
ing minerals though, so it’s ok.)
All ingredients are readily available from most
supermarkets etc, and are super cheap.
Equipment:
Scales (accurate to 0.01g)
3 x ~1L water containers (preferably glass, and
odour/residue free)
Method:
• Dissolve 1.38g baking soda in 1L of deionised
water — this is your “buffer” concentrate, or “alkalin-
ity”. Label and set aside.
• Dissolve 10.14g Epsom salts in another 1L of
deionised water — this is your “Magnesium” concen-
trate, or “total hardness”. Label and set aside.
It’s important to note here also these recipes use
magnesium as the source for total hardness; not cal-
cium. This method only requires ingredients easily
obtained from any supermarket. This is entry level
stuff. You can mess about with calcium, sulphates,
chlorides, and pH control when you graduate from here.
The following are a list of recipes where you will
add a small amount of each concentrate to a sepa-
rate volume of fresh deionised water.

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