Does water have a taste?
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From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Goldfield. I'm headed to meet my pal Sandin at the coolest new shop in town, the Water Emporium.

Hey, Sandon. Wow, this place looks fancy. I know. I am so excited to try all the different flavors of water. I hear they've got one that comes all the way from the Himalayas. Oh, and there's one from a Scottish lake. Maybe it'll have hint of Loch Ness Monster. Wait, I thought this place had flavored water, like lemon basil or cucumber kiwi. It's just water? Yeah.

Water doesn't taste like anything. Oh, Anna, you sweet summer child. Please enlighten me and our listeners, because we've definitely gotten questions about the taste of water, like this one. My question is, does water have a taste? Yes, water has taste, because you can taste actually the different mineral compositions out of the water. My name is Martin Riese, and I'm the leading authority of buttered water.

My title is water sommelier. That means a sommelier is a person who knows a lot about wine. I do the same with water because water has taste and you can even pair water to different food and beverages.

Every water starts as rainwater. So it comes down and rains on our grounds, and the grounds have different minerals with them. And minerals are, for example, like sodium, potassium, silica, calcium, magnesium. And these types of minerals are based in the grounds, and water takes them with them, and you can then taste and drink the different minerals in water. ♪♪

Some waters can be salty when there's a lot of minerals in there. When waters have a very low mineral content, then they are more like on the smoother side. Some waters can be bitter or metallic. I even had waters who were like almost like acidic. And I had some waters who almost like tasted like a grapefruit or coconut. And it was not coconut water. So that is really fun. So water has really a lot, a lot, a lot of flavors.

So this water, what we have in front of us, comes from the Fiji Islands. And this water is very, very smooth and almost a little bit fruity in the aftertaste because this water has a lot of silica content in it. And silica is a mineral what makes water very, very smooth. So when I'm tasting this water, and I will do this right now...

I'm putting water into my mouth, then I'm adding a little bit of oxygen to it to brighten up even the flavors in my mouth. So what you're trying to do when you swirl water, you put the water a little bit to the back of your mouth and then you're putting your tongue almost like in front of your teeth and then you're swirling water and you're adding like oxygen to it. Yummy.

It sounds maybe funny, but it's actually very good as well to taste the differences in water. And I think everybody should do this. Just go to your grocery store, look for different spring waters. That means these waters coming from nature and purified water means these waters coming from a factory. And you can really taste the differences from A, B or C brand. It's very fun to do. Um, um, um.

Ooh, wow, this water from Alaska is really crisp. How's yours? I got one collected from the needles of California redwoods, and it is smooth. Well, I'm never going to drink water the same way again. I'm going to swish it around and slurp it and taste those minerals. Do you want to try another one? I'm thinking Mount Fuji snow melt. Consider that a yes from me, please.

If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more watery wonderfulness, check out the new season of Forever Ago, where we have a whole episode all about the history of swimming. If you have a moment of um question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time, and the next day, and every weekday. Until then, um...

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