Hardness or softness of water

jennyb said:
My old Mum used to swear by washing her hair in rain water. But now I'm wondering if rain water is soft water or not.
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It's soft. Rain water is essentially pure water plus anything pickled up from the atmosphere.
Hard water is caused by limestone and a build up of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)2), and calcium sulphate (CaSO4).
Rain water dissolves the above as it passes through limestone leaving home in the rock such as caves or similar. The chemicals, carbonates and sulphates, are what stalactites and stalagmites are made up of in caves when the water can no longer hold anymore of them and deposits them back into the ground on its way to some water reserve (underground lake or river).
 
We use a Brita water filter most of the time. I think that if you drink water on its own it does taste better if filtered. But I don't always bother to filter it if making coffee. Not sure if it makes much difference to the taste of hot drinks.
 
alexander said:
We use a Brita water filter most of the time. I think that if you drink water on its own it does taste better if filtered. But I don't always bother to filter it if making coffee. Not sure if it makes much difference to the taste of hot drinks.
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You might want to use filtered water to save on the buildup in the coffee maker.
And yes, unfiltered water does affect the taste of all drinks.
 
Kake Lover said:
I've just come home from a weekend at my parents and the thought struck me how quickly I'd got used to their hard water. We have very soft water and one of the first things I did was wash up a water bottle and a flask, but I squirted far too much washing up liquid in and I had to rinse everything much more thoroughly.
It got me thinking about the effects that the hardness or softness of water has on the way we cook and experience our food and drinks.
The only other things that I have noticed besides needing more detergent with hard water is:
  • tea brewed with hard water tastes so much better, but that could be that was what I grew up with. I know that a good real ale will have been brewed with hard water.
  • boiling anything in a pan like eggs will leave a white mark around the edge of the pan, which is why we always have one old saucepan that is only used for boiling eggs.
I don't think that I have noticed any other differences in the way that I cook or taste.

What about you?
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.Yes boiling in pan sometimes leaves white mark for example if we take eggs better you can try oven for boiling eggs and all. and dont use hardwater .
 
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