Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Drinking Distilled Water / What’s the Risk ?

Seriously, it seems I recall that Midway atoll was dependent on desalinized seawater.
As has been stated, sailors must have gotten along drinking it.

Regular water also contains a certain level of allowable levels of contaminants....and it is not rare to find pharmaceuticals from people flushing medications into the water system...distilled water should have none. We receive most of our minerals from the food we eat...which in itself may contain pesticides and agricultural contaminants.....distilled isn't going to hurt you.

Yes, Slummy, you are incorrect.

Distillation occurs when a compound or element enters the gaseous state and is then reconverted to a liquid state and collected.

(Gold can be collected via Mercury distillation)

And no, heated distillation does not guarantee a pure product. Even though ethanol has a higher vapor pressure than water. When boiling the mash, you still get 5% water in the distillate, as well as many other contaminants including traces of methanol.

Vapor pressure of water is high enough that it will enter the gaseous state at temperatures below freezing.

When condensation forms on the outside of your iced tea glass, or in our case the outside coils of our heat pump at 20 degrees F this morning, that is distilled water.

Even the boiling point can be manipulated significantly by changing atmospheric pressure.

When condensing syrups or juices, they are heated in a closed chamber until the top of the chamber is filled with steam. Cooling coils at the top condense the steam back to water, which lowers atmospheric pressure inside the vessel, and thus depresses the boiling point.⁰

Products are condensed in this manner to prevent scorching of the product and to make the process more energy efficient.

I spent many years working in a lab with both distilled and deionized water on tap. We often filled a cup with de-I water for consumption. It is harmless.

Distilled/deionized water is acidic. Very. Very weakly acidic, because water naturally has a low pH. Distilled/deionized water has no buffering ability. The slightest contaminant will cause massive pH swings. Even the absorption of Cabon Dioxide will depress pH further as Carbonic Acid is formed.

But there are lots of buffering agents present in the human body.

I use RO water in my aquarium. I have to keep a few limestone rocks in the aquarium to prevent pH swings into the acid range which can be lethal to aquarium livestock. Calcium Carbonate is a strong buffer.

It makes sense slummy.
With distilled there is nothing to interfere in the "matrix" of water molecules...
No stray attractions/repelling forces...
But for some reason 110-degrees is floating around in my head...

No argument intended, just thought experiment.

How does the zinc, iron, phosphorous, thiamine, and niacin make it out of the boiling pot and into the condensate to be included in the whiskey?

No risk, whatsoever. Any minerals, or salts that were removed will be easily replaced by your diet.

Yes, pure water is commonly known as "hungry water". It is low pH, acidic. Just a trace of buffering compound such as any carbonate will change that characteristic drastically.

Purified water does not "strip" the body of essential elements. It just does not add any.

Hard water will precipitate elements onto an ice cube tray. If you drink that water, you are consuming those elements.

Much of the water bottled in the US for consumption is RO water. It is remineralized before sale, not specifically for nutritional purposes, but for palatability.

Shaman, that sounds like electrolysis from a current leak.(bad dock wiring in marinas)
Do a search for "stray current corrosion of boat propellers."
Stx may know about it. It eats sacrificial zines like nobody's business then gos on to propellers, shafts and rudders.

Thank you.

And it showed.

As I recall, it was done because water freezes, while beer doesn't. So beer is available for drinking while water is not.

The only downside I can see is that you won't have anything to mix
with your Prestone, top off your batts, or fill wifey's iron.

yes, you can, beer and beef.

In the days of sails, a lot of sailors got by drinking rain water. Granted, it would have been far less polluted way out there in the ocean.