WATER

[rafletcher]

IIRC Coca Cola took bog standard tap water, put it through a reverse osmosis filter (the kind of thing anyone can have installed in their home) and then called it pure water. The real comedy was when it turned out that RO filtered water lacked the taste people expected from their water, so Coca Cola put some of what the filter had filtered out, back in.

RO water (like many filtered waters) can be flat tasting. We were given it (in bags, not bottles) when on a trip in the Dom rep.

The process you describe is re-mineralisation.  It's how breweries not in Burton on Trent manage to make beer with "Burton" water - RO first, then add back in the "right" cocktail of minerals. It's also how many mineral waters are "made", either from tap water, or from borehole supplies (though they have additional filtration and disinfection steps)

[rafletcher]

I've been told that the reason that all Sheppard Neame ales taste the same is because of the water they use. 

Just saying!

You can't have tried many.

Their water all comes from the borehole on their site. They fought a long battle, which they ultimately lost, to prevent Tesco siting a petrol station nearby - the fuel tanks sit in the groundwater and any failure would irretrievable taint the S-N supply.

[rafletcher]

Lake District variety is an acquired taste.

My Portsmouth Water Company raised daughter described Lake District water as tasting like "cold blood". She hated it.

She's a bit of a water connoisseur and gets through litres of the stuff every day.

When I was a student in Pompey (1970's) it was always a shock to fill the washbasin that first morning back. It stank so much of Chlorine it could have been in the local baths!

[hellymedic]

Is Leeds water still brown due to this Moorland Pete chap?

[T42]

Our local water comes out of the hills a couple of km away.  It was delightful until they lowered the arsenic content (which was already below the legal max), now it's bitter.

[Pancho]

Lake District variety is an acquired taste.

My Portsmouth Water Company raised daughter described Lake District water as tasting like "cold blood". She hated it.

She's a bit of a water connoisseur and gets through litres of the stuff every day.

When I was a student in Pompey (1970's) it was always a shock to fill the washbasin that first morning back. It stank so much of Chlorine it could have been in the local baths!

Hmm. Maybe it's different actually on the island (it probably is - most things are) but we're on the mainland and the water's perfect. Or maybe I've just never known different.

[contango]

IIRC Coca Cola took bog standard tap water, put it through a reverse osmosis filter (the kind of thing anyone can have installed in their home) and then called it pure water. The real comedy was when it turned out that RO filtered water lacked the taste people expected from their water, so Coca Cola put some of what the filter had filtered out, back in.

RO water (like many filtered waters) can be flat tasting. We were given it (in bags, not bottles) when on a trip in the Dom rep.

The process you describe is re-mineralisation.  It's how breweries not in Burton on Trent manage to make beer with "Burton" water - RO first, then add back in the "right" cocktail of minerals. It's also how many mineral waters are "made", either from tap water, or from borehole supplies (though they have additional filtration and disinfection steps)

I used to have an RO filter in my kitchen but over time the flow rate from the spigot was sufficiently low it was more trouble than it was worth. I didn't fancy paying the price for replacement cartridges and when it was clear I was moving abroad and renting the house out there didn't seem a lot of point fitting a new filter to the new kitchen.

RO water is fine for drinking IMO, but not so good for coffee. It took me a while to figure out why my espressos lacked the punch that even Charbucks could provide, and when I stopped putting RO water in the espresso machine I realised just what a difference it made.

[rafletcher]

The filter (it's basically a membrane of PTFE will molecular sized perforations through which the water is forced at high - around 16barg in larger units - pressure) stops the minerals passing through, and gradually scales up. Acid cleaniong can help recover it, but only about 80% effective each time so eventually it's no further use. The "concentrate" in a domestic water unit is the waste, but in some applications the concentrate is what you want, and the dilute (water in most cases) the "waste". See pharmaceuticals for instance.

Demin water of any stripe tastes odd (to me)- be it distilled, RO (which I can tolerate), deionised etc. etc.  I cannot drink the water from our lovely new offices filtered water tap - it leaves a terrible metallic aftertaste for me (though apparently not others). I drink the tap water (which is mains thankfully)

[contango]

The filter (it's basically a membrane of PTFE will molecular sized perforations through which the water is forced at high - around 16barg in larger units - pressure) stops the minerals passing through, and gradually scales up. Acid cleaniong can help recover it, but only about 80% effective each time so eventually it's no further use. The "concentrate" in a domestic water unit is the waste, but in some applications the concentrate is what you want, and the dilute (water in most cases) the "waste". See pharmaceuticals for instance.

Funny to think of diluted water being the waste product of a water filter. Hey ho...

Demin water of any stripe tastes odd (to me)- be it distilled, RO (which I can tolerate), deionised etc. etc.  I cannot drink the water from our lovely new offices filtered water tap - it leaves a terrible metallic aftertaste for me (though apparently not others). I drink the tap water (which is mains thankfully)

I'm quite happy with the water coming out of the filter jug we use here. Truth be told at a push I'll drink the tap water but it doesn't taste as clean. The filter jug looks like it's little more than a charcoal filter. After seven months we're still using the filters we bought for $20 back in January.

[Wowbagger]

I drink tap water and resent paying huge sums for bottled water. I sang in a concert at the Albert Hall (a "from scratch" effort involving a long rehearsal, followed by a gap, and an evening performance)a few years ago and my pal Enid, who was in the same music group as me at college in the early 1970s, came along as well. I took my Sigg bottle (birthday present form Charlotte OTP) along with me, which I replenished as necessary, whereas Enid was forced to buy bottled water from machines at £2 a bottle.

At lunch, she and I adjourned to one of the good-but-cheap Chinese restaurants in Kensington, and they filled my bottle again for me. She must have shelled out about £6 throughout the day.

I would pass a law that all towns and villages proved free tap water and free public lavatories. Some countries are very good at this, but we are getting worse.

[contango]

I would pass a law that all towns and villages proved free tap water and free public lavatories. Some countries are very good at this, but we are getting worse.

In the UK the powers that be seem to be very good at making it illegal to urinate in public while making it increasingly difficult to perform in an approved receptacle. Where more and more places are restricting their facilities to customers only and public toilets are being closed, I wonder just what lawmakers think people are going to do when they simply have to go.

It's a great loss, if they collected it all up they could offer teenagers money for the pus from their zits, blend the two together, and make advocaat.

[contango]

On another note, it's just another reason to like rural Pennsylvania. In town (where "town" usually means a fairly small settlement) most businesses open to the public have facilities available. If you're out of town the chances are you're somewhere that passing traffic isn't a problem and, as they say, "the world is your urinal".

[Mr Larrington]

In the UK the powers that be seem to be very good at making it illegal to urinate in public while making it increasingly difficult to perform in an approved receptacle. Where more and more places are restricting their facilities to customers only and public toilets are being closed, I wonder just what lawmakers think people are going to do when they simply have to go.

A certain The Mayor Of That London has decreed that the bogs in Trafalgar Square will now charge twenty pee a pee.  This is the same The Mayor Of That London, BTW, who encouraged businesses to make their kharzis open to all comers and even had maps put up to show the location of the available spots in your neighbourhood.  Which, at least in the centre of Walthamstow, have mysteriously disappeared.

[Bledlow]

MrsC prefers her tap water to be filtered.
Having grown up in Southampton (water so hard it cracks if you drop it) and then going to Manchester (see Kim's comment above) I can drink almost any tap water.
But having a filter jug in the fridge all the time is nice as I prefer water cold.

I grew up getting tap water from under billions of tons of chalk, & filtered through at least 100 metres of it. I had trouble adapting whenever I went anywhere where I didn't need a whole bar of soap to get a lather, & the water tasted funny if the pH was below about 9*.

I put water in a bottle in the fridge if I want it cold.


*May contain elements of exaggeration.

[Bledlow]

IIRC Coca Cola took bog standard tap water, put it through a reverse osmosis filter (the kind of thing anyone can have installed in their home) and then called it pure water. The real comedy was when it turned out that RO filtered water lacked the taste people expected from their water, so Coca Cola put some of what the filter had filtered out, back in.

RO water (like many filtered waters) can be flat tasting. We were given it (in bags, not bottles) when on a trip in the Dom rep.

The process you describe is re-mineralisation.  It's how breweries not in Burton on Trent manage to make beer with "Burton" water - RO first, then add back in the "right" cocktail of minerals. It's also how many mineral waters are "made", either from tap water, or from borehole supplies (though they have additional filtration and disinfection steps)

"Burtonisation" - done long before reverse osmosis was practical on the necessary scale. Originally, they just threw in some gypsum. I think later some of 'em analysed the local water, then added whatever parts of the Burton mix were missing. Results depended on whether the local supply contained chemicals not found in Burton water, but an approximation of it could be achieved. But simply adding gypsum survived, because that's the main mineral responsible for the Burton flavour.

[orienteer]

For cooking we use Brita filtered tapwater. Tea and coffee are noticeably better at the start of the filter life (about a month).

Our water used to be Colne Valley ground water, but now is nth-hand Thames water. While I'm sure it is "clean", nothing is done to remove all the hormones with which it has been fortified upstream, so for drinking water we use Highland Spring bought in bulk packs, not a significant expense for the improved peace of mind.

[Wowbagger]

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the residents of Chelmsford have the same water pass through them repeatedly.

When my brother worked for the Essex Water Company he managed a project which took the treated sewage outflow, which had been put back in the river and allowed to flow downstream and out to the sea at Maldon, and sent it through a new processing plant that treated it with ultraviolet light supplied it to the water treatment plant, either directly or by pumping it back into the river upstream of the water treatment plant at either Langford or Sandford Mill, I forget which.

His work on this won the Chris Binnie Award in 2002, an international prize organised under the auspices of the Institute for Chemical Engineerinng