Using water from an artesian well

[CanadianJesus]

I have a natural well nearby that is reported to have the purest water in the world. Would this be safe to use in mead without boiling? How would it compare to bottled water? My local Walmart sells bottled springwater from a nearby town atop the Niagra Escarpment in the opposite direction of this well. It also tastes very good.

Do you think this would contain much bacteria if any at all? Would I end up with an infected mead if I were to ferment using this water without boiling it? The scientist who researches it says it's cleaner than any bottled water you can buy in the store and goes so far as to state that it's cleaner than any arctic ice from 8000 years ago. Should I trust his judgement?

I intend on using this water with Rice Wine before I try it with mead just so I have an idea how it tastes in a fermented beverage compared to the other local bottled spring water. The store bought water tastes more like my local tap water and the water from the local well has a more 'natural' taste, sort of like the rainwater it once was. The store bought bottled water lists only spring water and ozone as ingredients, so there are no additives unlike my tap water.

Here's a link with more info about the well:
https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/purest-water-world

 

[Maylar]

I'd say you can't do any better than that. Next, you should start keeping bees :rockin:

 

[Grod1]

lol total joke, do you have a grasp on how microbiology works?
that water is filthy. boil it. Or do you not need soap because you cant see the germs on your hands?

 

[mabrungard]

Ingredients are things that man added to a product. That a water has no ingredients is meaningless. The water picked up things as it flowed through the ground. While its notable that there is less lead in that water than other sources, I don't see any other mention of what it does (or doesn't) contain. The article mentions the likely filtration or adsorptive action of the local geology, but it appears focused on only its effect on lead content.

I expect that there is other ionic content that exists in that water and it may or may not improve or degrade your beverages. Artesian (or spring) water is no indicator that its good to drink or to brew with.

 

[CanadianJesus]

Yeah, I will probably boil it before use. I intend to try it with rice wine first to see how it tastes in a beverage. I have had no issues regarding taste with the local bottled water that I get which is cheap enough at $1 per gallon.

I need to see about finding somewhere to get it tested, or possibly getting access to the local scientist's own lab reports for bacteria and other microorganism content. Maybe even mineral content too. I can see that the water is filtered really well, but it will obviously pick stuff up that wasn't there to begin with traveling in the ground for so long.

Neither water source tastes better or worse than the other, but they are noticeably different from each other so it will take some experimentation to see which is more suitable to my needs.

I know another guy who uses it for brewing and a certain process that involves brewing and then heating the brew to extract the product that we don't talk about here. His stuff tastes great, but he doesn't make mead.

It would be nice to have a truly local mead, but that would mean isolating my own local yeast and finding a strain that works well for mead, as well as figuring out a local source of nutrients to add to it. I guess I could get away with calling it local and using internet bought nutrients, since they are absolutely mandatory in mead and would be very hard to produce on my own.

 

[CanadianJesus]

Actually, come to think of it, maybe the minerals in the water can actually be beneficial to the yeast in some way possibly, especially in rice wine which uses no nutrients in the recipe... hm, stuff to think about and research.

 

[Grod1]

i use bee pollen as my yeast nute for beers. i duno if it would work for mead but im sure it wouldn't hurt.
:"Bee pollen is the food of the young bee and it is approximately 40% protein. It is considered one of nature's most completely nourishing foods. It contains nearly all nutrients required by humans. About half of its protein is in the form of free amino acids that are ready to be used directly by the body."

 

[wildmazer]

I would use the springwater, untreated. I've used untreated springwater a number of times without any issues. Of course, since I only use wild yeasts, I'm way less finicky about sterility and sanitation than most of the folks here. Ymmv.

 

[Maylar]

Actually, come to think of it, maybe the minerals in the water can actually be beneficial to the yeast in some way possibly, especially in rice wine which uses no nutrients in the recipe... hm, stuff to think about and research.

That's correct. Yeast need certain minerals and that's why we use spring water and never distilled water. I'd use that and not boil it.

 

[CanadianJesus]

Could boiling the ground water evaporate any minerals from it? I just don't want to spend $100 on honey and loose it to an infection from bacteria in the water (which I'm not even sure is there).

 

[Bilsch]

Could boiling the ground water evaporate any minerals from it?

No. If anything boiling will tend to concentrate the minerals slightly due to water loss.

 

[Maylar]

Boiling won't remove minerals but it will remove the dissolved oxygen from the water, which is something else that yeast needs in the early stages of fermentation. If you're concerned with bacteria I guess treating the water with k-meta would work, but all the mead folks are using bottled spring water (Poland Springs, etc) without treating it first. If your local source is so highly rated I wouldn't hesitate to use it.

 

[engineofgod]

I've never boiled anything, but then again I've never used spring water.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

"spring" identifies where the water comes from. It means absolutely nothing in terms of the water quality. If you want to know what's in it, send a sample to a lab.