The mystery of the creamer curdling in coffee.

[dtuckness]

At work we have never had a problem until recently. We use bottled water and fresh ground coffee. Fresh brewed coffee started making the creamer some of the ladies used curdle. So I changed the coffee to a different type that I had on hand and it still happened. I changed coffee filters and it still happened. We tried a different creamer and it still happened. Then I tried a different bottled water and it stopped curdling. If someone can tell me what that's about I'd like to know. The water we were using was from one of those fill it yourself RO places that caused the problem. The water we switched to is from Walmart.

[RelishPDX]

It sure sounds like either the RO filter in the machine has a fault in it and needs replacing, or there's a leak in the water line. I'd give the company who maintains the machine a call to let them know your experience.

I'm not totally up on how RO works when the filter is "full", like happens with charcoal filters a'la Brita, where there's a real danger of the charcoal leeching back into the water it is filtering some of the same bad chemicals you're trying to remove, once the charcoal passes its capacity rating. It's gotta go somewhere after all!

[TeRReT]

coffee is acidic, maybe the other water is slightly more acidic and the two combined created an acidic enough environment for the creamer to curdle. Thats about all I can come up with unless there is some sort of other mineral that can cause it to curdle.