Why would anyone need to parody something that is instant self-parody?
But [here you go][1] : “the Timmy Brothers, Brooklyn–based makers of bespoke drinking water, are introducing handcrafted water to the world with an almost pathological attention to craftsmanship and a thirst for helping people become less thirsty.”
[1]: https://vimeo.com/131422396
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I know the joke is there, but seriously- it’s only there because of almost universally missing education.
No one makes studying the taste of water a thing but this guy, because everyone normal thinks water is water. As if the base, neutral water is somehow the main arbiter of the actual taste of water.
This is like saying English food is the taste of all food possible, regardless of the spices and ingredients, because hey, English food is as neutral in taste as anything else, and it uses the same ingredients for cooking as 90% of the world’s food, so all cooking, the thing we call cooking, the result of it, it’s always the same. And to think otherwise, we will mock you.
That’s ridiculous. Both because English food isn’t all the mocked bland stuff, and because, think about what you just read. It’s ridiculous.
Go to Japan- there is a similar focus on the chemical content and taste sometimes, of water- but in hotsprings. There are entire magazines devoted to complex graphic pie charts of minerals and other qualtiies to the country’s innumerable hot springs, what kind of smell the water has, what it’s source is, how many ppm of manganese is in it, what that means for your health in specific detail, what folk remedies it (will, assumed) cure or allieviate, etc. Many springs by the roadside, on hills, on in temple complexes have their own charts and plaquards describing all of this too.
So there are people who focus on these things most of us never notice, entire cultures that do- just speaking of fellow Americans, we don’t as a whole really.
Aside- I wish there was a secret, master map, like a google maps, that was only for hidden natural springs, all over the world. No matter how small. Imagine the joy in finding a geocache? Now imagine that is something that you can ingest for refreshment, and constantly replenishes. It would be like a map for HP potions in the real world. Too many people want to keep their springs to themselves though… Maybe a facebook for hidden springs? So if you’re friends with someone, you can see the springs they’ve found too?
Best water I ever had- by far- on RIshiri Island, northern most Japan. The south east side of the mountain island has a roadside spring under a small bus-stop like wood shelter. It is 100 years filtered glacial melt water from Mt. Rishiri. Nearly frozen ice cold, even in middle of July. The taste was incredible. It too had a sign with the mineral makeup. I can find the coordinates and a pic if anyone’s interested. This was water you’d country hop for- it’s beyond description good!
That’s not an especially apt comparison because there’s a simple, universally accepted chemical formula for what constitutes “water.” It’s two hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom, anything beyond that is extra stuff. But there is no universally accepted formula for what constitutes “food” because even the most basic staples vary widely from culture to culture.
You use English cuisine as an example of something “neutral” but there are millions or even billions of people worldwide who have never tasted bread made from ground wheat or cheese made from cultured cow’s milk or the flesh of a chicken. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people worldwide use cassava as a food staple even though most Americans have probably never even heard of it.
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The best water I’ve ever tasted was hiking in New Mexico.
We thought we had enough water for the final 15 mile leg down the switchbacks of a mesa. We ran out if water about five miles in. We did make it to the bottom of the mesa, and there happened to be a shitty little brown puddle there. It was nearly opaque but we could see the nymphs and stuff in it. We ran it through our filter pumps, added enough iodine to turn the water visibly lilac in color, and drank that puddle dry.
Best water ever.
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For anyone visiting Salt Lake City, there’s a park build around a natural well
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Oh dear I could go on and on, but yes. As I said in a previous thread not arguing or disagreeing, just observing.
There have been springs in many places, but most memorable in Scotland that were so red with iron it was insane. I had a well that pulled up so many nitrates–from 200 feet down!!–it was undrinkable. And after a day of letting the chlorine evaporate from my municipal water I love the taste.
It is so clean, and not too soft.
Eta
I don’t know if any of that is readable.
Went to Scotland, irony water.
Had a well dug, learned about nitrates.
Municipal water, pretty tasty if it airs.
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In Scotland, even the water is ironic.
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Made from girders.
IIRC, Irn Bru in Scotland is one of two places in the world where Coke isn’t the #1 soft drink. T’other is Inca Kola in Peru.
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I believe a few places in Russia have also enthusiastically adopted it in lieu of stinking imperialist sewage-water, coke.
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This is the best Irn Bru advert though
I know I’m going to be hitting a keyword here, but this is the most fucking privileged thing ever. I’d argue that this made sense if this was some sort of scientific study, or a career based on such comparing trace elements in water to say concurrent dietary preferences or historical preference as a water supply and a resultant tendency to settle in one area over another, but no.
This is a guy who gets paid to note/make up “tasting notes” for bottles of fricking exotic water to sell them at a premium to (I’m guessing here) fairly wealthy people who want to feel special drinking (or thinking they can differentiate) different non-local waters.
Waste aside (bottles, carbon footprint of shipping etc…), this is IMHO even worse than wine snobbery (hmm… notes of black cherries and tannins with an oaky finish… am I describing water or wine?), because you’re overpaying for a non-manufactured commodity that a lot of people in this world die from lack of access to. Kind of seems a bit like eating cake while sitting on a starved to death person’s corpse to be a bit melodramatic. If you’ve got that much money to waste, donate some of it to your favorite charity and then toss some tap water in your stainless tumbler and feel good that you’ve helped to actually do some good rather than feel exclusive and exclusionary because you drank water from a volcanic spring filtered through the toes of virgin tribal girls.
Gad! I’d actually pay for a bottle of genuine water from the Lethe to drink after learning that this is a real profession.
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That said, not to metacomplain but I wish more people focused on this than hipsterentrepreneurs, I spent some time in Bali recently and thought that I could just bring my own sports bottle. Between the temperature, lack of regular washing stations, and abundant flora mine got funky within a few days and I was reduced to buying wasteful plasric bottles from the local Nestlé ownership of national resources.
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Did they roll under the seat of your car?
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Except, most people have’t tasted pure H2O. Water contains a variety of different minerals that give it a variety of different flavors. The concept of “neutral water” is fictitious, because I guarantee that anyone who’s had pure, unadulterated water will describe it as anything but neutral.
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Something like this may have helped you with the “flora” (or is it “fauna” at that level?).
They’re not perfect, preferring pre-filtered water to “purify”, but I bet it would have helped with weird growth in the water bottle…
UV light “purifiers” claim more efficiency than they provide. I really can’t trust them, sadly.
I’d like to nominate the municipal tap water of Graz, Austria.
If he has never tasted it - or at least the better known tap water of Vienna, then he’s not doing his job right.
I seriously claim that it can compete with the best brands of bottled spring water.
It’s just what happens when you have plenty of mountains nearby and no chlorination. Chlorination is necessary in places that are less favored by geography, and if you don’t trust the hygienic standards of your water supply. In many countries, however, people have forgotten that it is absolutely possible to deliver germ-free water to a tap without making it taste like a swimming pool.
You’re right, of course, but you get the spirit of what I was trying to say, right? I’m not the best person around words, despite having a language linked degree, but I find there are too many people willing to point out every logical flaw in a statement nowadays that was never meant to be logical in the first place. I mean, I even said- think about what you just read- it’s ridiculous.
No offense or anything intended I’m sure Brainspore, so no worries- but please, I myself meant none either. To English people or intelligent people or otherwise.
Yeah, sounds like, that could’ve been dog piss, but it would’ve been the best water ever to me too! Sounds like you just made it man
To Bobo-
Waste aside (bottles, carbon footprint of shipping etc…), this is IMHO even worse than wine snobbery (hmm… notes of black cherries and tannins with an oaky finish… am I describing water or wine?), because you’re overpaying for a non-manufactured commodity that a lot of people in this world die from lack of access to.
yeah man, I agree with the premise and your arguement. And maybe I’m throwing myself under a bus with this, but fine, I feel like I get run over plenty in life- I helped found a whiskey tasting group in Pittsburgh. I thought the idea of what I do now 3 years ago was complete shite, the utmost snobbery, like you do now about water. I figured all the crazy tastes beyond oak and general whiskey were pointless to try to discern. The idea just pissed me off.
What happened? I tried it in earnest. Tasting introduced me to Armagnac. And Pedro Ximenez sherry cask finishing. And a shitton of other really interesting stuff I never thought mattered- until I had it hit me in the face. Or the throat, so to speak.
I drank cheap liquor as shots to get f**ked up quick, if I can be so blunt. I still do, but now I really appreciate the wonders past just smashing my brains out. Do I think its ridiculous that people pay 350$ for something like a Glen Farclas Family Cask? Yes. Do I understand why it’s worth that much? Now, finally, yes.
Quality, true quality, I think that anyone perfects anything, Scotch, Armagnac, hell, now even water- by recognizing it, and going to the trouble to do it at all, despite what it costs, despite all the people starving in the world, thirsty, etc, I think that’s obscene. It’s crazy to do it in the face of all that. But because of that, in part- that’s what makes quality, kind of perversely, worth that much. Not other people’s suffering. People knowing about it, and having to not ignore it- but try to devote time to something that would otherwise be common, in the face of knowing that fact.
It’s perspective. The guy in the video even says at one point early on even he can’t believe he’s doing it. He gets what you are saying, I think. But your argument, while it is morally correct, and just, and valid- if everyone followed it, there would be no beauty, no art in this world. In any avenue.
It’s easy to say people should do X instead of Y thing that you think is frivolous, it’s another to actually do X, knowing this, understanding this, and not ignoring it- but keeping it in your head, and continuing to create, because to not do so would deprive the world of whatever beauty you are trying to bring into it, no matter how egoless you make it.
I’m sure this argument is very, very old- and it should be. It’s one of those things we must never forget.
On the face of it- yeah, it’s water. But I thought all scotch was essentially the same. I bet we’d be truly surprised, like that woman in the vid, to try some of these “waters”. My guess is that if they are charging 4$ a glass as I noticed, they aren’t buying them all at the supermarket man. Somethings, however frivolous they may seem in the face of all the world’s bullshit, it’s good that they exist- at worst, it gives us yet another thing to mock and feel morally superior against, at best, it’s a new facet of why all of us want to live a happy life once we fix all that bullshit.
That’s my 2c.
Edit- apologies to LDoBe for adding long edit to something you already liked, not trying to retro-favor myself or anything man
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