Any public wells / hand pumps in Dublin parks?

tractorist

I'm looking for a source of non-fluoridated water. Obviously whatever comes from the tap is sanitized with fluoride. I'm making homebrew cider from fresh ingredients and would prefer to use water from a well.

Are there any public wells in the city?

[please don't go off topic and start discussing tap water and chemical sterilization in this thread]

rubadub

I don't know of any but in future rather than using kits some people buy cartons of apple juice and just ferment it with no added water or sugar. Lidl have good pressed apple juice (not from concentrate) which is on offer from time to time, it is pretty cheap anyway.

There are several ways to "freshen up" tap water, get rid of chlorine etc but if you don't want to know....

Gaz

I dont know much about chemical sterilization but we use a Reverse Osmosis unit to prepare tap water for our marine fish tank. no chemicals involved.

Anything artificial in the water would kill the fish/corals , so this is the purest water available.

Sorry if thats too off topic.

tractorist

I'm not using any kits to make my cider. I select ingredients myself and try to buy the purest possible. From my experience, juices from the supermarket are terrible, full of chemicals and even if they work with yeast, they smell like sewage.

Usually I buy normal fruits and blend them. They have fewer chemicals in them (pesticides), give very good taste and ferment much better with yeast. The latter I get from foreign shops - fresh. Hungarian yeast is vey pure, Polish seems to be somewhat diluted and has a bad aftertaste. Then I use sugar and tap water with those ingredients.

Now, as kind of an experiment we are trying to make cider from proper organic ingredients. I already found sweet berries in a forest near Dublin. Then bought pure fruit sugar and found proper fresh yeast with no aftertaste.

The only thing I need now is water. Originally my intention was to collect some rain water and than filter it and boil it. However I would prefer a more normal solution like water from a well.

The idea behind all this is to see if real, organic home brew cider is better. Last time I checked, to do reverse osmosis you have to buy equipment for around 200€. It's like buying a cow just to get a glass of milk.

rubadub

tractorist wrote: »

From my experience, juices from the supermarket are terrible, full of chemicals and even if they work with yeast, they smell like sewage.

Dunno what chemicals would be in there, you can get many brands of pressed apple juice and several people report good results in the homebrew forum (I will move this post there).

tractorist wrote: »

The latter I get from foreign shops - fresh. Hungarian yeast is vey pure, Polish seems to be somewhat diluted and has a bad aftertaste.

Are these just bread yeasts though? You should get better results with a decent quality yeast intended for cider, even if it is dried yeast. Get some in date, many shops have out of date or very old dried yeast

tractorist wrote: »

Then bought pure fruit sugar

What is this? pure fructose? fruits are not pure fructose and it costs a fortune whenever I have seen it.

You can see levels in fruits here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Fructose_and_starch_functionality_in_food_systems

tractorist wrote: »

The idea behind all this is to see if real, organic home brew cider is better.

There is only one guy I heard of selling real organic cider in Ireland, I got bottles from him in temple bar market before. I expect you could use it to propagate more proper cider yeast. He would certainly not be adding sugar or water to the mix, "real organic cider" would be just apple juice & yeast.

You could just filter water with britta jugs or a filter system on the line, osmosis strips everything out, even just letting water sit out allows chlorine to dissipate, as would boiling it.

oblivious

tractorist pure cider you will not need to add any water, there will all you need in the must


you can easily get ride of fluoride by letting the water stand with out a lid for a day or two or add a campton tablet

Also you have no evidence that any of those spring wells are safe to drink from also. There can have a high level of enteric bacteria form animals using the well or moving within the area. An also well in around the city maybe contaminated for seepage

rubadub wrote: »

Dunno what chemicals would be in there, you can get many brands of pressed apple juice and several people report good results in the homebrew forum (I will move this post there).

Vitamin C for antioxidant? all i have ever seen and they have to label what goes in to our food, beer on the other hand is totally different

rubadub

oblivious wrote: »

Vitamin C for antioxidant?

Yes, thats all I have seen, not really something I would be worried about or view as a "nastie". Some just add lemon juice, though I expect somethings are used to calrify the clear juices.

Could be far worse things in the well water like you mention.

tractorist

Maybe "chemicals" -- when referring to common supermarket juices -- isn't the right word. I used to have apple, pear, and peach trees back in the days. I can tell that normal juice doesn't ferment like that. You can tell by the odd smell that this is not natural. There are different types of juices in supermarkets of course, maybe some are good but I doubt it.

The yeast I use is made for baking. However you can't really feel that in your cider. They are fresh, and very pure. I tried once some granulated yeast from a brewing shop, and its quality wasn't as good. I buy Hungarian yeast, from a shop behind Cineworld next to Koreana. The easiest to buy, Polish yeast is weaker and I think it has some added ingredients for baking. The aftertaste is bad.

Spring wells? You mean like streams? No I wouldn't try that. What I mean by saying "public wells" is basically a deep hole in the ground with something on top, like hand pomp to get water out. Something like this:

The source of water is underground and sealed off. They are quite common in mainland Europe, many of them quite old. They still work well and people, like tourists for example use them and I never seen anybody get sick or anything. I even had one made in my back yard. Maybe if the pomp is not in use for a couple of years the first few liters would have some dirt in them. All you have to do in that situation is start pumping and everything clears out after a moment.

Anyway I've seen one from the bus while on my way to malahide. It's just on the side walk, I wonder if it works.

enda1

Up around Kilmashogue and Ticknock at the back of Rathfarnham there are a number of public taps.

Though I expect they have been converted to piped water.

I have a well in Kerry if that's any help.

Pure water tested by Kerry CoCo, and filtered for grit.

Can't be bate


Why not just buy a few 5 litre bottles of water at Lidl or some such place?

Corsendonk

Why do you need water for real cider? Isnt it all apple juice?

oblivious

Corsendonk wrote: »

Why do you need water for real cider? Isnt it all apple juice?

+1

sevendays

its probably a bit late to reply to this thread, but Im from meath, many houses in the countryside have their own well as there is no mains going through the area. So our water has no flouride or chlorine added. We did get our water tested years ago and it was fine, we added a filter anyway which ensures there is nothing extra in there, (mice falling into the well and contaminating that way or sewage from neighbours septic tanks etc.)
You may know someone with their own well water piped to their house for next time, or if you still need some water pm me.