On 25/04/2021 12:01, Mark Carver wrote:

We still have a hard water tap for drinking water, and filling the
kettle etc, I didn't think drinking softened water is a 'long term' good
idea ?

Depends a lot on the quality of the water. I recall that a place I used
to stay (and indeed my own house before they did away with the private
supply) had soft water off a granite catchment that tasted very good.

Officially bad for you and potentially able to dissolve lead pipes but
it was a very high quality natural pure water.

It certainly tastes crap.

We now have Northumbrian water (originally intended for the steel
works). It would taste OK if it didn't have so much chlorine in it. It
needs to be charcoal filtered to make it pleasant to drink. It is
particularly bad at weekends so I suspect they dump a double dose in the
holding tanks on the Friday afternoon and none over the weekend.

Real coffee is very sensitive to having just the right amount of water
hardness. Too much and you get bitter free base alkaloids and a nasty
looking scum on the surface and too little and it is a feeble brew.

Newcastle turns out to have almost perfect coffee making water.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown