[goobatrooba]

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 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.

[rob74]

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.

[stratocumulus0]

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.

[mschuster91]

> 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 with lead [2], PFAS [3] and pharmaceuticals [4]. And that's just "rich world problems" - 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.

The value proposition of many a "branded bottle water" is that the water sources they use are so old and deep that no human activity can have contaminated them.

P.S.: And that's before thinking about if the hot water supply in your home has its tank flushed and cleaned and the anodes serviced regularly... neglect your hot water installation and you'll get disgusting shit like [5].

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-fl...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24685...

[3] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules-limit-pfa...

[4] https://www.usgs.gov/water-science-school/science/pharmaceut...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ppNPRbNysg4

[cesarb]

> 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 (and I don't say that lightly, I don't think I've ever seen an exception) has either a water filter connected to the plumbing (for unlimited on-demand filtered water), or at least a separate standalone filter, or sometimes a drinking fountain which gets its water from large mineral water containers (and it's normally real mineral water bottled from real mineral springs, not that nonsense that is adding minerals to tap water and saying it's mineral water).

Edit: and IIRC, there's a law that bars and restaurants must provide filtered tap water to their clients without extra cost when requested. Even the law requires filtering.

[marcosdumay]

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.

[quickthrowman]

> P.S.: And that's before thinking about if the hot water supply in your home has its tank flushed and cleaned and the anodes serviced regularly... neglect your hot water installation and you'll get disgusting shit like

I guess it’s time to post this PSA again.

Never ever drink from the hot tap, always turn on the cold faucet only or turn the handle all the way to cold. Even if you’re filling a pot or kettle with water to boil.

The inside of a water heater is frightening.

[Aachen]

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

[jrmg]

Restaurants charge for tap water where you are?

[msm_]

Yes, in Europe it's standard to charge for tap water. I don't think I ever got water in restaurant for free in Europe (I'm European).

[brookst]

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.

[keane]

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

[beasthacker]

This is a great episode.

[Arodex]

"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.

[TrueSlacker0]

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)

[HWR_14]

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 .

[saltcured]

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.

[amluto]

You can also get gadgets called “permeate pumps” that consume no electricity and help a bit.

[zamadatix]

You can get no install ones that go on your counter or light install ones you connect under your sink (no more difficult than installing a bidet in your apartment). Cost wise they are cheap enough they pay for themselves (including filters) vs even cheap bottled water over the course of a year (well, if you only drink 1 bottle per week or something the economics will be different - 2 bottles per day should ~break even). ~3 filters per year, depends on the model and usage.

Bottled water is usually just a convenience factor of "I can take x bottles from this pack wherever at once on demand, or even grab them full of water I like while not at home".

[gwbas1c]

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.

[throawayonthe]

> can never be better than your local aquifer

lol getting that fresh water

also bottles have the mineral composition labeled, varies for tap water

[rob74]

It does vary, but as long as the sources stay the same, the composition will also stay within certain limits. For instance, Munich publishes its water composition. The list combines items that you might find on a mineral water label, like calcium and magnesium, with items that you usually won't find there, like lead (don't worry, it's below 0.001 mg/l): https://www.swm.de/dam/doc/wasser/trinkwasser-analysewerte.p...

[kimixa]

And bottled water likely varies by at least a similar amount - they're not testing and re-printing every bottle after all.

[killerstorm]

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.

[schnitzelstoat]

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.