One of my passions in life is cycling and I’m fortunate enough to have several customers who have been involved with the sport at a high level, including the man who probably single handedly changed performance cycling in Britain forever, paving the way for our un-rivalled Olympic and Road success.

As such I was overjoyed to hear from one of these customers who has recently opened a “cyclist oriented” coffee bar in Redbourn, Herts. I was invited over for a visit and a free cup and was impressed both with the surroundings and the coffee and we eventually started talking about water treatment for the very expensive coffee machine he had just bought.

“I guess I need some form of purification system” was his question, although surprisingly really good espresso actually benefits from a little bit of hardness left in the water. This helps to form a strong “crema” on the surface of the coffee, the trick being to leave enough hardness in the coffee for the crema but without too much that it begins to scale up a machine costing tens of thousands of pounds!

This is in fact reasonably simple to achieve, and as usual we have details if you’d like them.

So here’s wishing “The Hub” in Redbourn every success with their coffee and their calcium!