alt Hacker NewsA very strange project. I can see the reasoning to get something familiarly premium from a cheap source, but surely in any developed country your only ever starting point should be tap water. Water that has been bottled months ago and been in (usually plastic) bottles for months can never be better than your local aquifer even if the source is harder. Gets more difficult of course if you are in a big city and your main source is recycled water from the local facility, but even then a little osmosis machine or simple filter will give you a better water than any Don Perrignon or Evian.
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My take is that it’s about better replicating products that use water. San Francisco bread for instance. So it’s not about the best water to drink.
It really depends an what you're doing. If you have a small aquarium, (5 or under gallons,) buying water instead of treating it yourself may be easier, and cheaper. (Aquarium chemicals aren't cheap.)
Personally, I've been tempted to bring water from my parent's house, because their water is loaded with copper, which makes it very hard for ick to spread. Unfortunately, my aquarium is far too large to make it practical to move water from their house to mine.
"A little osmosis machine"... Where do I find these? Would it fit in my appartement? Can I install it without plumbing if I am only a renter? How often do I need to clean it? How often do I need to change the filter? How many kW and how many liters of wasted water do I need to spend to get half a liter of osmosed water?
Your recommendation may be valid for large volumes long term (like the aquarium or brewing at craft beer scale), but for all the other uses not.
Ehh, I guess the point is to get a "reference taste".
Then, perhaps, your local tap water is already close enough to that reference that you might not need to bother.
E.g. with tea I'm wondering if I'm bottlenecked by the quality of tea, water, my technique or taste buds. So I'd buy some expensive reference water at least once just to eliminate one of variables.
> can never be better than your local aquifer
lol getting that fresh water
also bottles have the mineral composition labeled, varies for tap water
In Barcelona, I just use bottled water. The tap water is disgusting due to both the extremely high mineral content, recycled water and the poor quality of the pipes.
The osmosis machines consume a lot of water which is quite expensive and problematic when we have droughts. I buy the cheap bottled water though, not Evian.
Yeah... especially since the source isn't really cheap either. Also, I have never understood how it can possibly make sense to ship water from Fiji to the US, or even from France or Italy to Germany. Local mineral waters may not have as much prestige, but they taste just as good. Actually, that would be a better project: compare the mineral composition of mineral waters to check which local mineral water best matches the taste of an imported brand.