07/09/2026
Melbourne has some of the softest tap water in Australia. Most offices take that as proof their coffee machine does not need a filter. It is a fair assumption, and it is wrong for three reasons.
Heating concentrates whatever minerals are already there, so scale still builds inside a boiler that runs all day.
Water that is close to pure makes worse coffee. Extraction needs some mineral content, or you end up with flat, hollow espresso.
Chlorine survives the trip to your tap, and you taste it long before you notice anything else.
The part most people get wrong: filters are rated in litres, not months. A fifty person office gets through a cartridge roughly three times faster than a small studio, so set the reminder by usage rather than by calendar.
Signs yours is overdue: the machine takes longer to heat, flow drops, coffee tastes flat, or white crust appears around the group head.
Full guide here: https://panica.com.au/water-filtration-for-commercial-coffee-machines-a-melbourne-guide/