it's just berkelying water people!

One year a group of us needs to crash this party.

and what do you consume between water samples to cleanse the pallette? On the brewing and distilling side of things, I'm stringent on water conditioning and quality but this is impressively nuts (unless they're able to tell me why bagels from Brooklyn are superior to all other bagels) http://berkeleyspringswatertasting.com/

I had an artesian well 3 miles down the road from my last house, it was good water but I wouldn’t try to berk the plastic pipe that comes out of the hill side. Or am I misreading the situation?

Best water I had was from a previously untapped aquifer that the brewery I worked for ran into the basement. We didnt even have it legally, but we had it. By contrast, florida water tastes like feet. 

I'm in this head space right now. I was picking up bottled water for a party yesterday. There was a sale on Voss.

I feel so guilty about drinking twelve-point-seven ounces of water out of a super heavy glass bottle with such a fancy cap. We don't even have glass recycling here. Half a lunch worth of water out of a bottle that will last until the end of time. 

The water? It's fine.

I'm with you. Clean water good. This level of obsession? It's not for me.

In reply to Brian :

Best, Pure clean unfiltered water comes from an underground cavern in Buhl Minnesota.  It takes over 5000 years for water to get to the cavern.  

The water is so clean and pure it isn’t filtered, nor is it treated with chlorine and Florid.  That means unlike most water it doesn’t have trace elements of radiation or PFOE. 

Not the craziest thing I've heard of. I really wonder what the judging criteria are. Like, is some minerality considered positive? Or would pure deionized water score the highest? I would pretty well guarantee that the fanciest most expensive boutique water does not win.

Judging which Municipal Water tastes the best is actually quite an intriguing concept. There actually is a lot of variation in that because municipal water treatment is focused on being safe to consume and keeping the piping treated, over having a pleasant flavor. (Mmmm... chloramine...) I'd feel proud of being the municipality that actually made my water taste best while being safe and good for long-term health of the infrastructure.

Yeah... I kind of care about good quality water. People think the water in Columbus isn't good because there's high Chlorine levels. Chlorine and chloramine are stripped out really easily with just activated carbon (aka, the most basic water filter you can get), then it's great.

But is it gluten free?

This only works if they are allowing the toxic runoff that is considered municipal water supplies to be judged and not telling people that's what it is. I want to hear some pretentious snob go on about the body of the water from Flint, MI, or the sulphur streams that Latrobe Brewing uses. 

We own a water distiller and distill a gallon a day.  We drink that much - it tastes good when super cold - nothing in it.

Look at your tap water made ice cubes?  Cloudy?  Whitish sort of?  

If we made ice cubes with distilled water (we don't) they would come out crystal clear and you can see through them.

Moisture is the essence of wetness and wetness is the essence of beauty.

I did learn recently that there is 30X the amount of fresh water below ground as there is above. 

Atlantic City's water usually does well in that competition. If only people knew that the wells are about a mile from one of the worst superfund sites in the country.

The further south you go in NJ, the better the water. Underground water here runs from north to south and most of it comes up in the Mullica and Great Egg Harbor Rivers. Cape May Country, at the southernmost tip, is completely cut off from the rest of the state by water and it's water supplies are also separate. It's water is quite sweet and clean

If you look on the side of most bottled water, you'll see it's simply municipal water from some random town that's been purified.

We bought a Berkey (no, not a berkeley) about 5 years ago.  We have well water and Mrs. VCH didn't completely trust it, so whatever we drink or cook with runs through our Berkey.  Ours is a ~2 gallon counter top model, all stainless.  After 5 years of daily use, I finally took it all apart to clean it.  It was still remarkably tidy inside, a quick wiping down and it was ready to go again.  I'm no water snob (nor really any kind of snob), but I can tell the difference when we go out to eat and order a glass of water.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

We work in Woodridge, IL and a coworker stopped at Walgreens to get a cheap case of water and I was looking at the bottle and noticed it said “bottled..municipal....in Woodridge, IL”.  

We laughed cause his desk is closest to the kitchen to get the same water.  

If I'm drinking plain water, good filtered water is nice, otherwise the slightly metallic tap water is fine. "Water bars" and "water tastings" are insanity that make audiophiles look good.

The only truly awful tap water I've tasted came from a well in Salem, Ontario. Awful sulfurous stuff that even smelled bad from a distance. They used water from a nearby spring for drinking purposes around there.

I grew up in a town with the nastiest water you can imagine. It would ruin anything you cooked and don't even think about making coffee with it. 

I fully appreciate good tasting water. 

Not sure I would call myself a connoisseur though. Some of the best water I've tasted comes from here. This artesian well has been running for a couple of hundred years. 

Datsun310Guy said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

We work in Woodridge, IL and a coworker stopped at Walgreens to get a cheap case of water and I was looking at the bottle and noticed it said “bottled..municipal....in Woodridge, IL”.  

We laughed cause his desk is closest to the kitchen to get the same water.  

 

Hey, cool. We probably pass each other on the way to work. I get water from the water dispenser in our lunchroom. Also has ice. I assume Bolingbrook water is about the same as your Woodridge water. 

GameboyRMH said:

Insanity that make audiophiles look good.

Lol

I never thought about water much until I started dating my ex- years ago.  Her parents have a farm in PA that has a continuous spring.  There is an outlet into a trough by the barn where locals have been coming to get water for over 100 years.  They have that same water piped into the houses.  Damn it's good. And doesn't leave spots when you wash your car.

Appleseed said:

But is it gluten free?

There was a story going around a while back about somewhere in New York that had a problem with copepods in the municipal water. The water authority refused to do anything, citing that there were no government rules regarding live crustaceans in the tap water, until somebody pointed out that the animals weren't kosher to eat.

I'm with the Beer Baron on municipal water taste test being an interesting idea. There's some places where the city water tastes fine, and others where there's so much sulfur or other weirdness that I have to hold my nose if walking past a set of lawn sprinklers. The water where I currently live is OK, but tastes a bit better if it's run through a filter.

MadScientistMatt said:

Appleseed said:

But is it gluten free?

There was a story going around a while back about somewhere in New York that had a problem with copepods in the municipal water. The water authority refused to do anything, citing that there were no government rules regarding live crustaceans in the tap water, until somebody pointed out that the animals weren't kosher to eat.

I'm with the Beer Baron on municipal water taste test being an interesting idea. There's some places where the city water tastes fine, and others where there's so much sulfur or other weirdness that I have to hold my nose if walking past a set of lawn sprinklers. The water where I currently live is OK, but tastes a bit better if it's run through a filter.

Muni water is an interesting concept. I used to live in inver grove heights mn. Water was fantastic. Not secret wellfantastic, but good. I couldn't drink hastings water, which was quite literally the next town over. 

town I lived in, we all had wells until city water arrived. They forced us all to go to city water. We kept our well if only non-potable uses, but it did taste better