Fake mineral water

…showing you how to make your own mineral water, more or less

Source water Select your water from list
Input the values for your water

Target water Select bottled water from list
Input the values for bottled water

Recipe

nothing yet…

Rationale This web application tries to help you approximate the chemical composition, and more importantly, the taste, of your favorite mineral water without the financial outlay, and environmental cost, of using bottled water. You can start with your local tap water or with ion-free (distilled or de-ionized) water.

This is not an attempt to duplicate the whole range of minerals that might conceivably affect the taste of a water, only calcium and magnesium. The nice thing about that limitation is that the materials needed to do this are easily available, in the USA at least, in drugstores: gypsum and Epsom salt.

Note also that if your source water (presumably local tap water) is higher in calcium or magnesium than your target (bottled) water, this web application cannot help you.

Unfortunately, there are some bottled waters whose mineral contents vary so widely that it would be futile to try to approximate them. Waters in this category found so far: Poland Spring.

Finding out a water’s mineral content

If you do not find a mineral content entry for your local tap water in the list here, you might find it by a Web search.
Failing that, you might want to have your water tested following suggestions from the BeerSmith Home Brewing Forum.

If you do find information on a tap or bottled water that is not available here, please let me know so I can add your data to the site.

Sources for the information in this application

Much of the information on USA cities’ tap waters is from The Magnesium Web Site.
Many of the mineral content values for European bottled waters are from Eupedia.

Comments and questions: <perin@acm.org>

Last modified Jul 29 2022