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Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

waterdictionary.net

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Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#51

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…

What it's showing is the water profile historically associated with brewing Edinburgh and Scottish ales, rather than Edinburgh's current tap water profile. But yeah, it should be much more clear about this.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#52
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pum…

Is the waste higher in the unpowered machine than the powered machine? Because saving electricity at the cost of water isn't necessarily a good thing .

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#53
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always thought this was baloney but James Hoffman’s recent video where he steamed water with the steam wand instead of boiling it normally for an americano changed my mind. I tried it and it was a genuinely different tasting drink. Not sure what causes it but different dissolved gases seems plausible.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#54

I make my own mineral water - it's surprisingly straightforward. Make a concentrate of whatever you like, add a bit of it into a carbonation bottle, carbonate it, shake, refrigerate, and either consume sparkling or let it offgas. You have to carbonate because (at least in my case) the amount of minerals per liter is too much for them to dissolve on their own, but they generally stay in suspension even when degassed

Care to share some ratios? Where you get the minerals from? Electrolite mix? Won't it explode everywhere if you shake after carbonation?

I buy raw food grade minerals - calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, plus salt, lite salt, epsom salt, baking soda.

I make about a 40x concentrate (500ml makes 20 liters), I put about 15-20ml in an ~800ml bottle. Make sure you shake it vigorously immediately before use, like literally shake right until you pop the cap off and pour it, or you'll get weak water early and strong water later (it won't dissolve)

Recipe is something in this ballpark, no need to be especially precious about it, you won't taste minor variation:

    35g CaCO3
    15g MgCO3
    15g NaHCO3
    2g Epsom Salt (MgSO4+7H2O)
    1g Salt (NaCl)
    1g Lite Salt (NaCl + KCl)
You have to carbonate it very hard using something like a soda stream or a CO2 regulator, need it to go well beyond drinkably fizzy to dissolve the minerals (mostly calcium carbonate)

It's better to use as cold water as you can get, carbonates are inversely soluble in water based on temperature, so just above freezing (~2C or ~35F), and it'll hold more carbonation.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pum…

Is the waste higher in the unpowered machine than the powered machine? Because saving electricity at the cost of water isn't necessarily a good thing .

The inherent issue with reverse osmosis is that you build up a "brine" on the input side. And the higher the gradient of these ions, the harder it is to do to the reverse move. The normal osmotic action is to pull pure water back through to dilute the brine.

I've heard of systems that attempt to just let the brine diffuse back through the source water system rather than dumping it. But, I think this is against code in any modern, thoughtful regulatory environment. You normally want explicit back-flow prevention to reduce the chance of contamination of the water system by end users.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#56
post #35

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…

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.

I think you're right. Relevant here is the This American Life segment "Call in Colonel Mustard For Questioning" about how Vienna Beef in Chicago had a difficult time determining what minor uncontrolled variable was making hot dogs taste different after they moved production locations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3140528

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#59
post #56
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're right. Relevant here is the This American Life segment "Call in Colonel Mustard For Questioning" about how Vienna Beef in Chicago had a difficult time determining what minor uncontrolled variable was making hot dogs taste different after they moved production locations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3140528

This is a great episode.

Re: Recreate famous water profiles using supermarket bottled water

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Precisely! There are orders of magnitude more people who are poor English writers (by virtue of being ESL or merely not having the gift) than those gifted at English prose.

What we are seeing is not a decrease of quality writing but a compression of the large span of poor writing into a much more narrow mediocre range.

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