Gourmet Coffee Corner

For many Americans, the morning shower and that first cup of coffee are indispensible components of the morning routine. More than just cleansing and refreshing, the shower spurs our bodies into action and gets us mentally prepared to approach the day, and we all know how coffee can give you that needed jolt in the morning. There is a nasty culprit, however, who can put a snag in these two daily rituals simultaneously: hard water.

If you’re having difficulty working up a lather in the shower or experiencing mineral buildup in your coffee machine, you’ve most likely fallen victim to overly abundant calcium deposits. To test your water for hardness, consider the benefits of a water test kit. These kits measure hardness in terms of “parts per million.” Hard water could be loosely described as containing 70 or more parts of minerals per million parts of water. If you have already fallen victim to the detrimental effects of hard water, you can utilize a descaler to help reverse the impact.