Jon Drinks Water #8819 Rain VS River VS Tap Water VS Big Berkey Water Filter System

"Jon Drinks Water #8819 Rain VS River VS Tap Water VS Big Berkey Water Filter System" is a water-comparison tournament video from Jon Drinks Water, episode #8819 of the series.

Featured waters

Berkey (Big Berkey) Water Filter, Pittsburgh Rain, Pittsburgh River, Pittsburgh Tap.

Winner: Berkey (Big Berkey) Water Filter.

What Jonathan decided

winner = Big Berkey ("clear winner... the Berkey is moving on to round 2"); tap = chlorine/"mild swimming pool" taste; rain = swampy; river = rubbery/mild gasoline taste but "not that bad", slightly better than tap

Berkey (Big Berkey) Water Filter

The Big Berkey was the "clear winner" against rain (swampy), river (rubbery, mild gasoline taste), and tap (chlorine, "mild swimming pool"). Then LYTph beat it in the next round, and the awards episode named it best water filter anyway. A filter with a trophy.

About Berkey (Big Berkey) Water Filter

Berkey is not bottled water at all. It is a gravity-fed home water filter made by New Millennium Concepts of Arlington, Texas, with the Big Berkey (2.25 gallons) as the best-selling model for 2 to 4 people. It uses proprietary Black Berkey filter elements and is popular with preparedness and natural-health communities.

Pittsburgh Rain

The Big Berkey won #8819, and it was not close ("clear winner"). The rain water was swampy. The river was rubbery with a mild gasoline taste but "not that bad." The tap tasted like chlorine, a mild swimming pool. The filter beat nature and the city both.

About Pittsburgh Rain

Not a bottled brand: a joke and test entry, presumably rainwater collected in Pittsburgh. The city averages about 39 inches of rain a year, so supply was never the problem. Urban rain can pick up air pollutants and roof runoff, so it is not recommended as a drinking source without filtration.

Pittsburgh River

The Big Berkey won #8819 ("clear winner"). The river water was rubbery with a mild gasoline taste, but "not that bad," and slightly better than the tap. High praise, relatively speaking.

About Pittsburgh River

Not a bottled brand: a joke and test entry, presumably scooped from one of Pittsburgh's three rivers, the Allegheny, the Monongahela, or the Ohio, which converge at Point State Park. The Allegheny is the city's actual drinking-water source, but the rivers also receive combined sewer overflows, roughly 9 billion gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater a year regionwide, so raw river water is not safe to drink.

Pittsburgh Tap

The Big Berkey won #8819 ("clear winner"). The tap water tasted like chlorine, a mild swimming pool. The rain was swampy and the river was rubbery, so the tap was not even the weirdest one that day.

About Pittsburgh Tap

Not a bottled brand: my hometown tap water, supplied by Pittsburgh Water (formerly PWSA), serving about 300,000 customers. It is sourced from the Allegheny River and treated at the Aspinwall plant, about 70 million gallons a day, with a second-stage microfiltration plant in Highland Park. Pittsburgh's water made headlines in 2016 when lead levels exceeded the EPA action level; lead has been in compliance since 2020, with over 13,000 public lead service lines replaced.