Live data from Hacker News

Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

waterdictionary.net

41–50 of 68 posts

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#41

A 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 ma…

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.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#42
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because restaurants make the most money on drinks, so selling you overpriced water with artificial branding becomes an excuse to charge the same money for water as one would for sodas. And some cannot be convinced that tap water could be safe to drink. I know a few people who exclusively drink glass-bottled water, because they fear microplastics on top of that.

The latter is yet another reason to ask for tap water in restaurants. It's probably fine but besides the uncertainty of what the plastics and additives do to a person, might as well not have more plastic bottles be produced, leech into the far-transported water, and then have to be disposed of responsibly. I usually explicitly request they write it up as a normal water price and just bring me a glass of tap

Restaurants charge for tap water where you are?

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#43
https://www.waterdictionary.net/water/edinburgh

> Edinburgh water is hard, with notably high sulphate

No it isn't. Where did they get this?

> Calcium 100 mg/L Magnesium 20 mg/L Hardness: 332 as CaCO₃

Actual data: https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/media/scottishwater/docume...

has five sampling points at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencorse_Reservoir (Edinburgh's drinking water supply)

    Zone        Ca mg/l  Mg mg/l CaCO₃ mg/l Hardness
    Glencorse A 10.04    1.31    30.44      Soft
    Glencorse B 10.36    1.36    31.44      Soft
    Glencorse C 10.04    1.35    30.60      Soft
    Glencorse D 10.16    1.35    30.90      Soft
    Glencorse E 10.06    1.34    30.61      Soft
They're wrong by a factor of 10 to 20.

How can I trust any other page on the site, if I check one and it's completely wrong?

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#44

https://www.waterdictionary.net/water/edinburgh > Edinburgh water is hard, with notably high sulphate No it isn't. Where did they get this? > Calcium 100 mg/L Magnesium 20 mg/L Hardness: 332 as CaCO₃ Actual data: https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/media/scottishwater/docume... has five sampling points at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencorse_Reservoir (Edinburgh's drinking water supply) Zone Ca mg/l Mg mg/l CaCO₃ mg…

Oh, dammit. Unbookmarks

It was a good concept. Somebody should make it.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#45

"Let sparkling water stand uncapped overnight to degas before mixing." This doesnt work. The water will taste nothing like the original desired base water profile. When water is carbonated the ph will drop (from say 7 to 4) and even when decarbed carbonic acid is still present from the process. In order to get the desired flavors just a ro water filter and build it back up to the desired profile.

Should work to boil it to drive out the carbonic acid as CO2.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#46
post #20

A 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 ma…

"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 craf…

Its a reverse osmosis machine. You can get them for as low as $100 on amazon or anywhere. I have one at the house attached to my sink that makes about 20 gallons a day on demand and a small commercial one at work that cost 220 and makes 500 gallons a day (its about 2sqft in size) filling a large tank. Neither are large nor high in electric usage, the home one has no power, the small commercial has a small booster pump. Its the water usage that is high, to get a gallon of pure ro water is about 1.5 to 2.5 gallons of "waste". You can use that waste for watering the lawn or rinsing things but its extremely mineral heavy. You dont clean them just replace the filters every so often (not nearly needed as often as recommended)

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was complaining about stilted prose, and indeed a few years back I would just have let it slide. But now it grates more I guess.

Which is deeply ironic since a few years ago stilted prose would be unavoidable, whereas now it’s more often a result of the choice to not use an LLM to clean up your text.

to not use an LLM?

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#48
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And some cannot be convinced that tap water could be safe to drink. It's a cultural thing, mostly. Not everyone has the luxury of, like me, growing up in a place like Munich where the water source is clean and pristine needing very little treatment. In many places water has to be chlorinated or, in the worst cases, is contaminated with gases from fracking to the tune you can set it ablaze [1]. Or it's contaminated…

> people who grew up in developing countries or even in extremely rural areas of Western countries who grew up with water unsafe to drink before boiling it off will be even more skeptical. I'm Brazilian. We learn early in school that water must always be boiled or filtered before drinking. I'd feel very uncomfortable drinking water directly from plumbing, no matter how much some people say it's safe. Every place here…

Keep in mind that the filters most people use in Brazil mostly only handles dirt that accumulates on the water tank and keeps the water in a nice temperature. If the tap water had any contamination, those filters would change nothing.

It's still good to get rid of that dirt. If you live near a main street or some other polluted place, it can become harmful. But it's not that much of a change.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#49

A 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 ma…

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.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#50

"Let sparkling water stand uncapped overnight to degas before mixing." This doesnt work. The water will taste nothing like the original desired base water profile. When water is carbonated the ph will drop (from say 7 to 4) and even when decarbed carbonic acid is still present from the process. In order to get the desired flavors just a ro water filter and build it back up to the desired profile.

Should work to boil it to drive out the carbonic acid as CO2.

That will drive off the other dissolved gasses, and at least according to some, will make the water taste stale.

Coffee heads have told me to use freshly heated and not reboiled water for that reason.

Post reply on HN