By Scott Manley, La Marzocco (and former master technician/tech trainer at Ecowater Systems)
Water quality issues are addressed just like we approach issues with brewing and grinding equipment.
When issues with brewing and grinding equipment arise, a technician uses all available information to assess the issue in order to affect a repair, restoring the equipment to full working order. This starts at the time of the initial service request, either by a phone call, email, and possible for some of you more senior members a pager. From this first contact we are already engaged in a process to repair the equipment, before we are even physically present to investigate the issue, and we attempt to get as much information as we can about the problem from available sources. We usually call the cafe and hope to speak with someone who has observed the problem and can describe it; and if we are lucky can do a bit of troubleshooting. If we have the time, or a long drive ahead of us, we may contact a colleague or the manufacturer if the description of the problem or equipment is unfamiliar to us, vague or of a unique nature. We may also consult prior work orders for said equipment to see if a pattern is evident. We reach out to resources before arriving on site so that we present ourselves as professionals equipped fully handle the situation. And from this we are already planning the repair, before we have even arrived.
Upon arriving we further engage with the barista or manager to get as much information about the time and events surrounding the problem, the “who,what,when,where,why” of it. And quite often not all of this information is available, for instance if you arrive after a shift change, or the equipment failed in the middle of the night and the openers just found it that way. At this point we then go hands on with the machine to verify that there is, in fact, an issue. We take the entirety of the evidence we have gathered, combine it with our own direct interaction, and proceed to repair the equipment. We then verify the repair is correct by operating the machine, and sometimes having the barista operate the machine while we observe them. Along the way, the most common step we take, the most repeated thing we do, is test. Root cause analysis baby!
Fixing a water problem is no different. Sure there are some new skill sets to learn, tools to employ, mindset to acquire and strategies to master; but really anyone who can repair an espresso machine can do this. Heck there’s even some cool new tools that involve using chemicals other than caffeine. It’s a lot easier than it looks too.
The important takeaway from this brief article is the importance of testing. All issues arising from water quality start with accurate testing. And more of it the better. We as coffee technicians have, by and large, taken it for granted that water filtration was in somebody else’s wheelhouse. Though, if we actually bothered to look in the that particular wheelhouse of most cafe operations, we would find it empty. NOBODY’S STEERING THE SHIP!
Well, no more my friends! We are going to take charge of the situation. And we are going to start with learning how to quantify what is in our water and take appropriate action to correct any deficiencies. In further articles we are going to learn about:
- Gaining a new common vocabulary about water topics
- Developing strategies to test, address and correct for deficiencies in product water
- Using testing equipment, such as portable meters, dip strips, titration kits and collecting samples for off site laboratory testing
- Installing and maintaining technology to filter and condition water
Let us look forward to a bright future free of scale, corrosion and misinformation. See you there!