Using filtered water, like that you can get from a Mavea water filter, improves and taste and experience of your jams, pickles, and jellies.
As many of you have come to know, water is often a primary player in canning. Most pickling recipes call to dilute vinegar by half. We can whole fruit by making a syrup of sugar and water. When I want to include an intense flavor (like ginger) in a preserve, I blend it with some water before squeezing it through some cheesecloth to get a potent little brew.
In all of these recipes, I make a point of using filtered water. Preparing fruits and vegetables for canning is often a process of cooking down and concentrating your ingredients. I really don’t want to concentrate any extra crud or crap in my finished product. I live in an older apartment building, so who knows what kinds of funky particulate matter is in the H2O that comes out of my tap? It’s just one of those steps I like to take to ensure that the quality of my product is as good as I can make it when I go to open those jars six or eight months later.
Edited to add: There’s been a little confusion in the comments. I don’t use filtered water in my processing pot. I only use it IN the canning recipes. Regular tap water is fine for the outside of the jars.
For most of my adult life, I’ve been a Brita water filter user. Recently, I had an opportunity to try the new Elemaris filter and I really like it. It’s made by Mavea (which is part of Brita), is entirely BPA-free and the filters are recyclable. It has a meter on top that tells you when the filter is due for a refill and the lid is designed so that you can simply position it under the tap and fill, no need to remove a piece or flip open a flap. They’ve even created a nifty blog called Inspired Water to help spread the word about this product.
Disclosure: Mavea gave me that black Mavea water filter you see above. I’ve also filmed a series of canning videos with them that will be appearing in the next few weeks. No money has changed hands and I wouldn’t say nice things about their pitcher if I’d didn’t genuinely like it.
I drink water all day from a BPA-free Nalgene, and if I’m feeling really motivated, I drop in some cucumber slices and fresh mint!
My favorite water beverage is coffee! The purest water makes the best tasting cup. I would love to win a filtered water pitcher. Mine is officially on it’s last legs, after being dropped and cracked (and patched) so many times!
I like my water with ice in a plain old glass. Lately, I’ve tried measuring out what I need for the day to see if I’m actually drinking enough.
In an aluminum bottle, ice cold!
I’m not a big water drinker so I have to make myself drink it. I like it room temperature out of a pint glass best.
We have a brita filter that we use to fill a larger water dispenser that we keep in our fridge so that we can have a larger supply of water on hand– our brita filter is too tiny for how much water we drink! We use it for everything though– straight out of the tap, tea, our pet’s drinking water, you name it.
I love iced tea with sugar and lemon, and hot tea with half anf half and sugar – a guilty pleasure!
Cold with a slice of lime or orange. In the summer, with a little mint in it.
my favorite way to drink water is with lots of ice and a squeeze of lemon 🙂
We love to drink water in our house but it’s an old house with old pipes. In a town called Springwater, we have the worst tasting water. Too much chlorine. So I have to try and filter or boil it.
i love to drink water all icy cold out of one of either my sigg or klean kanteen (love the way the metal container gets all chilly and makes the water taste extra cold — at least for a little while).
you can never go wrong with a slice of lemon.
and if i find i’m not drinking alot of water, i’ll go for fizzy water with a splash (and i mean wee splash) of fruit juice.
I prefer my water to be room temperature, with a hefty squeeze of lemon!
How does the Mavea pitcher handle removing strong flavors from water? Our well water contains a lot of iron – so much so that even with a heavy duty iron filter in the house, the water still turns yellow if it sits in the dog bowl too long. I can’t stand the flavor of our water, and so end up drinking mostly bottled water (which makes me feel incredibly guilty). I have not had much luck with the Brita filters removing this strong flavor. I would gladly invest in another filter pitcher if it takes care of my rusty water flavor!
Tea! Most definitely.
It’s weird because I have a Brita that I use religiously for my (and my dog’s!) drinking water but your post made me realize I don’t use filtered water in my cooking. Anyhow drink of choice is cold water in my kleen kanteen to go.
Icy cold and plenty of it 🙂
My favortie way to drink water is with some ice and a lemon. I would love a picture. Thanks for such a great giveaway. I agree with you on using great water in preserving. It DOES make a difference in taste.
I’m in serious need of a water filter… these look awesome!
I love to infuse water but tend to only do this on hot summer days–water with mint is my favorite! I also love cucumber water & water with orange/lemon. Yum… making me crave summer! Sometimes I wonder if I drink herbal tea more often than plain water, though. Thank you for the giveaway!
ice cold in a BIG glass
I love water cold out of my Brita in the fridge. Both at work and at home. Ice is always involved too 🙂 Our pitcher at home is starting to look a little ragged, so this would be awesome!
At the moment, my handy little water pitcher is sitting on my desk. If I fill it up in the morning and drink all day, I’m sure to get enough water.
Love your blog — I’ve learned so much from it.
My water has to be cold, i’ve been told that isn’t always the best way for the body to process but it’s the only way i can drink it. Not a big water fan but it HAS to be filtered and cold. This sounds like a great product.
Renee
water with fresh mint and cucumber can be just the trick on a hot summer’s day! i also just love it plain, at room temperature… keeps me going all day long. thanks for the recommendation! i’ve been a Brita gal for awhile, but really like what you’ve described about this filter. hopefully i’ll be one of the lucky winners, but even if i’m not i’ll have to check out mavea!
Water with lemon, iced tea, and brewed hot tea are my staples of life. I have celiac and am highly allergic to msg so most processed food/drinks are out for me, I LIVE on tea these days! (and pepsi throwback when I can find it!)
I’m a Brita pitcher girl too, but I like the idea that the Mavea filters are recyclable. My favorite way to drink water is cold right out of the fridge out of real glass, made out of glass. I drink twice as much water if I’m drinking it out of glass instead of a plastic bottle or cup.
Filtered water ICE. Nothing makes me crazier than icky ice.
This would be perfect for us! The ice maker no longer works and I only drink my water cold cold cold, so I always have to wait hours or constantly be refilling a plastic pitcher in the fridge already. Such a hassle! Add lots of lemon juice and I’m golden.
I run into the same issue/questions in my ancient apt building. We run to the store for filtered water when we brew, and I’d love to make it easy for canning. MY favorite water is simple ginger water (or iced ginger tea, however you look at it).
Icy cold from the fridge
I’d have to say COLD. The colder the better.
I love to use filtered water in my carbonator and a splash of mint!
I love to drink my water cold with a lot of lemon in it!
Neat. Generally in a glass, sometimes in a mason jar. Unless I’m at work, in which case its either the fountain or the Nalgene.
I get most of my water from the green tea that I drink at work all day. We keep a brita filter pitcher on the counter since most of us don’t like cold water and then use that to fill the kettle. I keep the tea mild so I don’t get too much caffeine and it keeps my hydrated. During the summer we’ll often make a pot of mild green tea mixed with mint leaves and let it reach room temperature.
Thanks,
Sherry
i probably drink water the most via tea. I am also guilty of buying the cases of small water bottles on sale– hey, If it makes someone in my house grab a bottle of water rather than a soda, it is WORTH IT!! 🙂
Plain cold water after a salty meal 🙂
lukewarm with a little lemon, or lime.
I love it straight out of the fridge (brita pitcher!) in a tall glass. Delish!
My husband drinks like a horse: sometimes a Brita pitcher over the course of a single nighttime rambling. A pint is gone in four big gulps! So: we drink water quickly. Hot tea would be #2. 🙂
I like my water straight up, especially when it’s cool on a hot summer day!
I use reusable metal bottles all the time. In the early days, when such bottles were not common, someone asked me, “What’s in that thing? You’re addicted to that stuff.” That’s me. Addicted to water!
Thanks for the post! It is nice to hear about new products. My favorite way to drink water is in the form of black tea with a splash of milk.
I love to have a cold glass of water, with no ice, while I’m working in the garden on a hot day. Dirt caked hands are a requirement for pure water drinking enjoyment. It gives me enough time to enjoy and ponder my next garden task.
favorite way to drink water? cold, in a canning jar, of course!
I like it COLD! I always keep a pitcher of water in the fridge so I can have it really cold whenever I like it!
Water, water, everywhere,
And not a drop to drink
Especially if that water
Comes out of my kitchen sink!
We just remodeled our kitchen and found that the new hose connecting our water gives the water a distinctly plasticy flavor…since we’ve always used BRITA anyway, its not a big deal, but it does make one think. My favorite recipe using water, teehee, is good old STRONG black tea mixed half and half with lemonade (its got a golfer name)…or STRONG BLACK coffee with some fresh milk from our goats
Ice cold out of the fridge with a little garden mint bruised.
I guess my favorite way to drink water is in a pot of coffee – but I also drink it all throughout the day from a bottle.
I put tap water in an old water jug to keep in the fridge. that way, we always have cold water. I also drink it with a little lemon.
I have several Camelbak water bottles that I love. One at work, another by the bedside, one in the car, one waiting for me at camp and always 2 chillin’ in the fridge. Love water! Have some in coffee in the AM, but drink straight up H2O the rest of the day.
Cold, from glass when possible.
I love water by the bottle full – and my bright green, stainless steel, novelty “Carbonated Pickle Brine” bottle is the perfect size and shape to quench my thirst here in dry New Mexico!
Cold with ice!
Oh this looks great! I always drink filtered water. I love it with cucumber and herbs like basil, mint, or lemon thyme.
I mostly take my water in the form of coffee and tea, hot or cold. I know it’s all in my mind but drinking plain water on purpose makes me feel too bloaty and floaty.
I love water! I like it room temperature, but our water has so much hardness that I usually have to drink it from the fridge (brrr) which has a filter in it. A filtering pitcher like this would be great b/c I could have filtered room temp water available at all times.
AND yay for the recyclable filters. I’ve written about that on tinychoices, I’m glad it’s going somewhere!
In a pint glass, with ice and a whole bunch of lime!
I drink the majority of my water in a pot of tea that I brew daily. Thanks for this oportunity…
I like to drink room temp water from the sole survivor of an old glass set printed with lovely trees. Yum!
I like to use my water in several ways to make hot tea to warm up on brisk mornings, with ice to cool down after a workout and to make ice tea in the summer
I use a reusable waterbottle and I like mine room temperature. The rest of the family has waterbottles but they prefer cold water. And I drink a ton of hot tea in my glass mug.
Icy cold with Chocolate Raspberry Sweetleaf stevia drops in my insulated stainless steel bottle. Oh, yum!
I love my Klean Kanteen. I’ve slowly been converting my boyfriend and family to using them too. I carry mine with me all day and refill the water. I usually don’t even use a glass at home anymore.
I love to drink filtered water out of my aluminum bottle. I’ve beaten the crap out of it, but it’s never leaked! Plus, the aluminum keeps the water cool, even on a hot day!
I love my bobble, a bpa free personal water bottle with a filter in the lid! You just unscrew the cap, pour water in, then drink. I haven’t bought a bottle of water in a loooooooong time thanks to this little gadget. Also, and this really is important because it makes me want to use it more, the lid is bright, bright pink! Okay, okay, and it kind of makes a noise you’d expect to hear when a door opens on Star Trek. That might add to the value for me.
In the winter I like a nice cup of hot tea with agave nectar and in the summer, nothing beats an ice cold glass of iced tea with a splash of lemon!
I just enjoy drinking water, cold from the fridge. I don’t doctor it up much in the winter, but in the summer I like to add some sprigs of mint and some cucumber slices to the pitcher and leave them to infuse for a while. I grow a variety of mint called Cotton Candy that has a pleasant sweetness to it that works really well for this.
My kids each have their own water bottles and drink water throughout the day. They seldom have juice at all.
Sadly I have trouble drinking a lot of water by itself so I like mine in coffee or flavored with Crystal Light.
I’m a water drinker, too. But I like it at room temperature, does that make me weird?
Chugging it. After a long, hard run.
I actually have a question about water. I was heating up my big canning pot yesterday and it’s collected a lot of rust. I didn’t want to heat up my jars in dirty water like that, so I used the oven. Is there a way to clean the rust from the canning kettle?
My favorite way to drink water is mixed with a strawberry lemonade, stevia-sweetened packet from Hansens in my reusable water bottle.
I’d love to try out one of those pitchers. I had a Brita but it broke a while back and I’ve gone without for a few years.
I drink a ton of water, straight-up. People say that watching me drink makes them thirsty 😛
I like to make bone broth from good clean water and drink it with a splash of lemon.
I like that the filters are able to be recycled! My Refrigerator has a filter on it, but as far as I know you can’t recycle those at all!
This would be great for having cold water on hand!
Tap water doesn’t scare me in the least, but maybe I’m fooling myself. If I win one of these I’ll do a side-by-side comparison.
Blue for me, please! Room temp, iced, or hot tea with cream. But I’m a Southern girl, so my favorite is iced tea with a stalk of fresh mint, in a vintage Ball mason jar.
I suck water down without even thinking about it when my CamelBak water bottle is near. We have incredibly hard water at our new house and would love to have the pitcher for canning this summer. (And drinking from my water bottle! :))
WANT. We have an in fridge water filter, but you can’t really use it when cooking (pasta, beans, canning, etc…) so this would be AWESOME.
I drink tea regularly as well as water in a cup from the tap. I avoid buying bottled water and will reuse the bottles I do have.
I have Sigg water bottles (one little, one big) that I would be lost with out!
Nothing beats a tall glass of iced water during a hot summer day, and a big cup of hot steaming tea in my favourite mug during the winter.
With ice cubes for me! My Britta pitcher is old, and a brand new, BPA-free one would be a fantastic upgrade.
I drink lots of plain water from the tap (probably better to filter it!) and I usually enjoy a cup of tea (peppermint or nettle) in the morning. This pitcher looks very cool!
My only concern is: how easy is it to find the filter replacements? I’ve got my Brita filter sources down now, but will I have to go out of my way for these?
Either way, sounds good, and I’m definitely pro recycling!
I drink my filtered water in tea mostly – my favorite is Earl Grey with a wee bit of milk and honey.
Coffee. And now I am imagining how much better it would taste with filtered water…..
Cool design. I drink my water straight, or in tea with lemon. Also, drink spring water and use tap for tea. It would be nice to save money with filtered water.
Me, me, me!!! I hope I win!! I make home brewed sweet tea every day. In the summer sometimes 2 or 3 pitchers a day. So refreshing! It’s the house wine of the South! :o)
We actually have really great water but since we live on the mountain we have a problem with too much minerals. In previous houses we have always used a Britta but haven’t gotten around to getting one here yet. It would be nice to can and not have so much mineral depositing to have to scrub off of everything when I am done. Thank you for the chance to win!
I have several old Perrier bottles filled with water in the frig. Something about green glass that makes water taste yummy. 🙂
My stainless steel water bottle is my constant companion. I love the purple color of this pitcher!
I always try to mention “filtered” water in my canning recipes, because it really does make sense. We live in a cottage converted from a 1700’s barn: our water supply is the original well. Last summer we had to “shock” the well with some sort of antibiotic because of bacterial build up. Blargh! Not in my jam, thank you!
I’m a water fiend: mostly I drink fizzy water from my fabulous Soda Stream. But – filtered water also makes pretty good coffee. 🙂
I love water cool but we add slices of orange, apple, lemon and line to it (without peal). It makes drinking water a true treat!
Korean roasted barley tea! I am hooked on it!
Favorite way to drink water? In a fancy water goblet with plenty of ice. It’s nice to nestle a slice of lemon on the edge now and then. And then there are all the other ways: in coffee, tea, hot chocolate, with Zip Fizz, etc. etc.!
In the winter like my water hot with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of honey.
Recently I discovered electric kettles and am currently using mine to heat water for tea. My current infatuation is loose mango green tea with a touch of honey… mmm!
You’ve lured me out of my lurkerdom with the chance to win a fancy water pitcher… I absolutely love this blog. As far as drinking water, my favorite way in summer is water with a slice of cucumber and some mint. The rest of the year, my favorite is Earl Grey tea with vanilla soymilk.
I love it straight up with ice. Drink lots of water during the day to keep hydrated.
We use a water cooler. It gives us really cold water to drink and the ability for quick hot chocolate. The kids love it in the winter. We fill reusable bottles when we go out and about. We recently ran out of bottles and no one could get used to plain tap water again. It just wasn’t the same.
Just pure, unadulterated water. Chilled but not too cold.