Coffee Water Test Kit Results Guide

What this kit checks

Great coffee is mostly water, and water is a recipe like everything else on the bar. Each measure has its own detailed guide:

• Hardness — body and extraction — and your descale schedule
• Total alkalinity — the buffer that flattens acidity
• pH — keep it near neutral
• Free chlorine — the flavour killer — aim for zero
• Total chlorine — catches used-up chlorine too

Reading your strip

Dip a strip in the water you actually brew with — tap, filtered or bottled — wait 30 seconds and match each pad against the colour chart.

What to do next

• Widely used brewing guidance puts hardness around 50–175 ppm and alkalinity around 40–70 ppm, with chlorine at zero and pH near neutral — a useful target zone rather than a rulebook.
• Chlorine above zero? A simple carbon filter fixes brew flavour overnight.
• Very hard water? Expect scale: descale espresso machines and kettles on a schedule, or brew from filtered water and re-test.