With Water From the Brita?

[ACDetroit]

I know I just read something on this not to long ago but could not find it with a search!

The post was on adding water to your whiskey or cubes and the fact that the quality of water/cubes makes a difference! (I agree)

I'm once again sipping some WTKS Pewter Top 4oz with a splash of water (Yumm).

The one thing I've noticed is the splash of water from the Brita water purification system does not cloud up the Bourbon :bigeyes: . I was always under the impession that water always caused the whiskey to get cloudy!

Not out of the Brita!

Has anyone else come across a filtered water that has no clouding affect on your favorite drink?

[BourbonJoe]

We even get cloudy bourbon when using "distilled" water. Don't have a clue as to why Brita water would not cloud the bourbons.

Joe :usflag:

[kbuzbee]

I try to never mix "foreign" material into my Bourbon :grin: but glad to hear the Brita is working for you. We do filter our drinking water, ice cubes.... heck even our shower has a filter but they usually strain Bourbon through charcoal already so it comes ready to drink, IMO.

Cheers,

Ken

[ACDetroit]

I couldn't agree more Ken but every once in a while I like a splash, not quite a shot in there to see what wakes up! The WTKS 1996 bottle I'm drinking now is great and if you hit it with a splash it changes into a strange bird . Just brings out some new characteristics and I found it very tasty both ways.

Cheers!

[mozilla]

....but they usually strain Bourbon through charcoal already so it comes ready to drink, IMO.

Ken

When I toured the Lotus facility, they had a filter medium made of, what looks like, thick flat coffee filters. They also have to soak the filters in bourbon to keep them from stripping the color out of the distillet. No charcoal was used.

[snakster]

I make my cubes with brita water; the thought being that the cubes will be better. Whether it's pyschological or reality (hmm, is there a difference?) I think it works. I usually put a brita cube in my summer pours (including my own WTKS the other night).

I've never had it turn cloudy, but then again, I've never added non-frozen water.

[melting]

I think you're all doing yourselves a diservice by using filtered water. I let the impurities right into my body so that my immune system can just keep on fighting. Don't ever give it a break.

Same for bottled water. I'm sure than all of you that don't happen to live under a rock read about the Aquafina scandall about a month ago. Water straight from Ayer Massachusetts bottled and sold as pure spring water. Talk about having to do damage control.

Chris

[ILLfarmboy]

I think you're all doing yourselves a diservice by using filtered water. I let the impurities right into my body so that my immune system can just keep on fighting. Don't ever give it a break.

Chris

Well, yes and no. I absolutely agree that your immune system needs to constantly exercise. Some people are germ freaks and they end up with weaker immune systems because of it.

But as to water. My well is 268' deep. Around here that means a high probability of hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg stench) which I have in abundance. I have a "Iron-Cleer Automatic Water Filter" from Culligan, An Iron filter which also takes out the hydrogen sulfide. It consists of a media tank and a reservoir tank and a small aeration fan. The folks we bought to house from, moved partly because the water. They didn't have a system that would deal with it. Silly people bought drinking water from Culligan (had it delivered no less):slappin: . Must have cost them an arm and a leg. But they still bathed in the "rotten egg" water.:bigeyes:

My folk's well is only 120' deep. They have very hard water with lots of Iron. due in part to the relative shallowness. Around here if your well is on the shallow side your water is usualy quite hard and probably has a fair amount of Iron. Without their Iron filter and water softener you wouldn't want to drink it and because it is very hard it ain't fun shower with it either. Believe me.

I, however, agree completely in regards to people who buy bottled water. Whatever your water problems there are in-home solutions and I don't mean Britta water filters, I mean whole house solutions for ALL your water not just your drinking water!

I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy bottled water! Some people have more money than sense!

[Special Reserve]

My parents had a shallow well (13 feet deep) plenty of water but it eventually got contaminated with farm chemicals after they came into heavy use. My crafty father devised a still to distill rain water from the cistern and used the well water to flush the toilets. He had a problem with odor from the shallow well which went away when the well got treated with household bleach.

Both my grandparent had great wells about 40 to 50 feet deep with very hard water. It was great to drink.

Your water should not be your source for organic or biological compounds.

Detroit has very good water, I drink it, or filtered water from my refrigerator for diluting drinks.

[ILLfarmboy]

Yeah. very shallow dug wells often provided very good water. but now days there is too much of a chance with contamination. Sad but true.

I have a cistern that sits just to the North East right beyond the kitchen. The people we bought the house from didn't even know what it was. They thought it was the septic tank, believe it or not. Needless to say they were from the city. Appleton Wisconsin, I think.

[jbutler]

I think you're all doing yourselves a diservice by using filtered water. I let the impurities right into my body so that my immune system can just keep on fighting. Don't ever give it a break.

Chris

Yep. That's why I just drink my used Mobil 1 5W-30 instead of recycling it. Cleans the system out right on down the line and reduces friction, even at high operating temperatures.

[luv2hunt]

JIM!!! LMAO!!!

Aquafina....same as Evian! (What is Evian spelled backwards....'naive' yup.....they got you too?!?!)

Dawn

[ACDetroit]

Detroit has very good water, I drink it, or filtered water from my refrigerator for diluting drinks.

My parents live in the Upper Peninsula and their water has a faint smell after it goes through their Culligan filter system but it's drinkable.

Our water in Detroit is excellent but smells a bit of chlorine out the tap. My Brita slim pitcher filters and keeps it cold in the summer to drink. While drinking my WTKS neat, I remembered reading a post on the site about water/ice cubes etc. making their bourbon cloudy. "In the name of science":slappin:, I used water from the pitcher and found it did not cloud up my drink. I also found out it really opens up the flavors in the WTKS.

I now like it neat and with a splash of water.

In closing, for those who do not like the fact that adding water (if that's your thing) makes your drink opaque. I have found that the use of the Brita water filters eliminated this reaction. :bigeyes:

Cheers!:grin:

[cousin it]

Around here that means a high probability of hydrogen sulfide

I used to love "sulfur water" as a child ... ice cold. I haven't had it since then. If anyone else liked the stuff, have you used it as something to cut your liquor? It seems it would over power the subtle characteristics of the whiskey. Maybe just a spash? Just wondering.

EDIT: I always thought it was the chill that clouded whiskey ... damn, I have a lot to learn, but that is why I'm here.

[snakster]

I think you're all doing yourselves a diservice by using filtered water. I let the impurities right into my body so that my immune system can just keep on fighting. Don't ever give it a break.

Well we ARE using Brita instead of Pur, so that lets SOME of the impurities through. All things in moderation my friend, all things in moderation.

[Special Reserve]

I've never get any opacity from adding either filtered or non-filtered water to bourbon. There may be a momentary effect of the two liquid mixing which disappears when mixing is completed usually within a couple of seconds.

Cheer.

Will

[CrispyCritter]

In my town, the city water used to be from wells, and quite hard. A few years ago, once the newcomers thoroughly outnumbered the old-timers, they voted to pipe in Lake Michigan water from Chicago, at 4x the price. :hot: As a result, the water softener is now out of use, but the house still has a reverse osmosis filter providing drinking/cooking/icemaker water, and it is nothing short of fantastic.

Any cocktails I mix use ice made from filtered water, and if I add any water to my whiskey, it comes from the RO tap.

[ILLfarmboy]

prior to living here we lived for a short time in a small town (pop. 300) serviced by a series of community wells. There we had a water softener. I had grown up with soft water my wife had not. So it was my idea to get the softner wich I thought at the time might take out the slight sulfur odour. It didn't. Mind you it wasn't that bad. Bathing in it wasn't a problem. But I'm picky about drinking water. My wife called Culligan and had an RO system installed. When she told me they were to install an "under the sink filter system" the next day, I was skeptical at first. I had had no experience with reverse osmosis filters but had, many years earlier, plenty of experience with other "under the sink filter systems" which simply didn't work as advertised. My skepticism was unfounded! The RO system worked beautifully!

When we moved we took the RO with us. But found it unnecessary once the "Iron-cleer" was installed. No sense in continuing to rent it from Culligan. Incidentally the "Iron-cleer" we bought outright. Culligan didn't/doesn't rent those out. 1700 bucks installed, but it's worth every penny. In retrospect I wish we had taken the softener with us but we sold it with the house. The water here isn't what most people would call hard but it isn't completely soft either. Well, not as soft as I was use to growing up anyway.

I wached the guy from Culligan install the "Iron-cleer", lending a hand when I could and asking questions along the way. I like to know how things work. Anyhow, one of the most interesting things he told me is their biggest obstacle is "people don't know what good water is". After getting a softener they will complain "their skin feels so slick" after getting out of the shower. Well, duh! That's your skin's natural oils. Something you aren't use to. I had heard this very complaint about my parents' water from my wife when we were dating and she would stay out at the farm on weekends, along with "I can't get all the soap out". Well, honey your using too much soap. There's a lot of ignorance about water. I think that's why bottled water sells so well. Which is why I'm always amused by threads like this one.

Distilled or reverse osmosis treated water would be the natural choice for diluting your whiskey. After all isn't that what the distilleries use when they dilute from barrel proof to bottling proof?