The Taste of Water

Linda Bittle

Some interesting things in this article. I do drink more water when it tastes good. I run my tap water through a Pur water pitcher for drinking and making beverages.

The Taste of Water, Explained by Water Sommeliers (vice.com)

kbmbillups1

Interesting they say it boiled down to mineral content, but I think other things that are put in our drinking water make it taste bad. We have had a Berkey for many years which has made us taste water kind of like those in the article. If we go out to eat or go over to a friend's and they give us water from the tap or the fridge door we can taste the difference!

After we'd had our Berkey for a couple weeks when we went out to eat one of our daughters told us the water at the restaurant tasted like butt 😁 and the other said I'd ruined her for drinking any other kind of water!

Recently my husband and I drove a long was to eat at a restaurant we'd heard a lot about. The food was excellent, but the water tasted just as my daughter described!

Torey

Wow! Who woulda thought! A water sommelier! I went on to read another article about a restaurant in LA with a water menu. Really!

I have been in some pretty fancy restaurants that offered a choice of water but only 3. Sparkling, still and table. The first two were bottled and the latter was just tap water.

gardneto76

This article is really interesting and oh so true. I remember my grandmothers water having so many minerals it smelled of rotten eggs. I refused to drink it unless it was filtered or turned into something like tea, coffee, or kool-aid. Whenever I go somewhere now I always take small sips of the water to determine if I can drink it. This explained why water has left my mouth feeling weird after some waters.

LaurieLovesLearning

Here is information about becoming a water sommelier from Canada's first.

https://www.watersommelier.ca/become-water-sommelier

Mineral content indeed changes the smell, color, flavor & the nutritional aspects of water. It affects the flavors of any type of drink you make with it as well.

The soil and rock certainly will affect filtration of water and will be responsible for putting any natural substance (beneficial or not) in the water. For example, in places here where there is shale & sand, the water is clear & usually tastes good (unless there is iron). Not too far from these areas or through some in some cases, runs the Assiniboine River, that has naturally occurring high levels of mercury. I don't know if you can taste or smell that, but it isn't good!

The chemicals put into the water affect it in many ways. It makes the water smell bad & taste bad. Who knows how things chemically interact in it after the addition. It is dead water besides. We drink unbottled natural spring water because it is living water and hasn't sat in plastic in storage (although unfortunately it sits in it here...any ideas for better containers for 60 gallons of water is welcomed). We go through approximately 3 1/2 gallons per day of drinking & cooking water alone. It is from a spring that has always continously run and has been used for drinking water from ancient days until the present.

I highly dislike tap water. I have never found it palatable. I'd disagree with the educated lady in the link I posted about Toronto having the best in the world. It's been highly treated & is dead. Then you should be filtering it, which she recommends woth chlorinated water. It can't be the best in that case.

She also views distilled & reverse osmosis as equal to GMO. I think that's interesting, but I'd consider the first stripped and the second altered. Tap or treated water, now that is closest to GMO as it is full of chemicals.

I wonder about the ever popular Bubly. I don't understand why people think it tastes good. The flavor is not good at all according to my tastes. Yet, mixed with fruit juice, that is overridden. I wonder why I don't like it straight?

I'm curious how much demand there really is for this, how much travel is involved, how much it costs & how much a pets can realistically make?

Linda Bittle

https://community.thegrownetwork.com/discussion/comment/918310#Comment_918310

Some of my relatives lived in a town known for its spring. The water was horrible! Sulfur made it smell like rotten eggs. I never could drink it. Tea in restaurants was horrible, so I always got pop.

It was supposed to be healthy, though.

LaurieLovesLearning

@Linda Bittle That would be horrible! There is a place in the northwest part of our province that has orange water. It smells bad and I understand tastes just as great. People either buy bottled water or go to the spring.

gardneto76

@Linda Bittle Yeah thats what my grandma always told me, that it was full of vitamins and minerals. Still couldn’t do it.

dipat2005

When I lived in Ashland, Oregon there was sulfur in the water and I couldn't drink it. It smelled and tasted bad.

Linda Bittle

Eldorado Springs, Missouri is where my relatives lived. I did a little research this evening to learn more.

Missouri Mineral Springs and Spas (socket.net)

Torey

Our well water is extremely hard and has a very high iron sulphide content. So rotten-egg-stinky and rusty-red stains on everything. If you can get past the smell, it has a bit of a metallic taste, too.

We have an inline water softener and iron filter which helps but I still need to use more soap than average and can't have white clothes. Still get alkali buildup around the taps. We buy filtered water for drinking cause the water softener adds so much salt unless we are able to get "wild" water from a local creek.

Most communities in BC chlorinate their water, some more than others. While travelling in the Kootenay region a few years ago, we stopped at a cafe and I asked for water with my meal. OMG! It was like drinking pool water. So offensive.

@Linda Bittle We have a huge number of mineral and hot springs in BC. Varying mineral content in each one. At least two are magnesium sulphate (Epsom Salts) where you can actually harvest the salts and at least one that is sodium carbonate (washing soda). There is one spring that has been commercialized and is selling the water as "Happy Water" cause it has trace amounts of Lithium. It has become a bit of a holiday adventure to see how many hot springs we can get to. We've managed to get to about 25 out of over 100 hot springs in BC.

water2world

I definitely drink more water when it tastes good! A restaurant we enjoy going to has horrible water, and I thought tea might mask the taste----NO WAY!

Good article @Linda Bittle