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 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.