Jon Drinks Water #8999 Honorable Mention Water Awards

"Jon Drinks Water #8999 Honorable Mention Water Awards" is an awards retrospective video (no new tasting) from Jon Drinks Water, episode #8999 of the series.

The Honorable Mention Water Awards: category awards (including best coconut water, best sparkling, best budget, and most charitable). Not a bracket tasting.

Featured waters

Aldi PurAqua Sparkling Black Cherry, Andes Mountain Sparkling Spring Water, Anheuser-Busch Canned Water, Berkey (Big Berkey) Water Filter, Brita Filter, Harmless Harvest Coconut, Hk Humankind Spring, Kick20 Caffeinated Water, Le Bleu, PurAqua (Aldi) - variant note, Pure Filter (PUR), Tru Alka (True Water / Alka True).

What Jonathan decided

best coconut water = Harmless Harvest; best sparkling = Andes Mountain; best flavored sparkling = Aldi Pure Agua black cherry; best caffeinated = Kick20; most surprisingly good = Anheuser-Busch canned water (5/5); best water filter = Berkey Big; best budget = PurAqua Aldi; best distilled = Le Bleu Ultra Pure Water; most charitable = HK Humankind Spring Water

Aldi PurAqua Sparkling Black Cherry

This one took home an actual award: best flavored sparkling water of the whole series. Beating every other flavored sparkling he ever reviewed is a real title.

About Aldi PurAqua Sparkling Black Cherry

PurAqua is Aldi's store-brand water line, and the Sparkling Frost Black Cherry is a zero-sugar, 5-calorie sparkling water sweetened with sucralose. It sells for about 59 cents a bottle, so this is an award winner you can buy with pocket change.

Andes Mountain Sparkling Spring Water

This is the one sparkling water that won his heart. Out of every sparkling he ever reviewed, this Chilean bottle took the award for best sparkling. Even a carbonation skeptic has a favorite.

About Andes Mountain Sparkling Spring Water

The sparkling spring water comes from Colico Lake (Agua Clara) in the UNESCO-protected Araucaria Biosphere in the Chilean Andes foothills. It is very soft and low-mineral, almost sodium-free, hand-bottled at the source using less than 0.6% of the spring's flow.

Anheuser-Busch Canned Water

The biggest upset on this list. He picked the beer company's emergency can over Liquid Death because it shockingly tasted better, and both got thumbs up. Then Hawaiian Springs beat it in round four, and the awards episode gave it a perfect 5 out of 5 for most surprisingly good.

About Anheuser-Busch Canned Water

This is not a retail product. Since 1988, Anheuser-Busch has periodically paused beer production at its Cartersville and Fort Collins breweries to can drinking water for disaster relief with the American Red Cross, over 90 million cans so far. The cans are not sold in stores.

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.

Brita Filter

The Brita pitcher was the star of its own little tournament. It won the speed test, it won the taste test over PUR and plain tap (which had a strong chlorine flavor), and in a bigger bracket it took down four more waters to move on. Food Club was the day's disaster, which he described in language we will not repeat here.

About Brita Filter

This is the same Brita brand as above, the German filtration giant named after founder Heinz Hankammer's daughter. The home pitchers and dispensers are the filtered-tap-water alternative his series kept drinking from, with standard filters rated for about 40 gallons or two months.

Harmless Harvest Coconut

Essence Water won the head-to-head as "a more watery water," and Harmless Harvest lost, though both got thumbs up. But it got its revenge later, when I named it the best coconut water of the whole series in the awards video. That is the kind of arc I love.

About Harmless Harvest Coconut

Harmless Harvest is a premium coconut-water brand made from organic young Nam Hom ("fragrant") coconuts grown in Thailand. It was the first US coconut water to be Certified Organic and the first in the world to earn Fair for Life fair-trade certification. It is never heat-pasteurized, just microfiltered, which preserves the taste and sometimes lets it turn a natural pink color from antioxidants.

Hk Humankind Spring

This is one of my favorite stories in the whole series. HumanKind beat Sweet Arrow in #5547 on charity after a taste tie, then got eliminated in #5568 for tasting like tap water. But I still named it the most charitable water in the awards video, because the mission matters more than the taste.

About Hk Humankind Spring

HK Humankind Spring Water was founded by T.J. Foltz, a former Christian youth minister from Philadelphia, and bottled at Laurel Run in the Poconos. One hundred percent of net profits go to clean-water projects like wells, filtration, and rainwater catchment in Haiti, Asia, and Africa. It won Walmart's 2012 "Get on the Shelf" contest as the top vote-getter out of 4,300 entrants. I said it myself: their charity is better, they give water to people who are actually dying.

Kick20 Caffeinated Water

It never got a head-to-head tasting, but it won the "best caffeinated" category in my awards video, which is a real honor in this series.

About Kick20 Caffeinated Water

No reliable information could be found for a bottled water brand named "Kick20." The closest match in search is Pure Kick, an energy drink-mix powder from The Jel Sert Company with 80mg caffeine per stick, but that is a powder, not a bottled water. The record is unclear on this one.

Le Bleu

Le Bleu was on a tear. It won three straight: against IGA, against a five-water field including Pureau, and against TJ's New Zealand Artesian ("the winner is the blue"). Iceland and Tourmaline finally stopped it in #4993. Then in the Honorable Mention Awards it took home Best Distilled Water, which feels exactly right.

About Le Bleu

Le Bleu is made by the Le Bleu Corporation in Advance, North Carolina, steam-distilled through a patent-pending process they call "five steps beyond Mother Nature." They have been delivering 3- and 5-gallon jugs across the Carolinas and Southeast for over 20 years, and the water comes in award-winning cobalt-blue bottles. It even won Best Non-Alcoholic Beverage in the Western Hemisphere at a Miami trade show.

PurAqua (Aldi) - variant note

The regular PurAqua came up in the flavor episode, and in the #8999 awards show it took home best budget water. Cheap and good is a combination he respects.

About PurAqua (Aldi) - variant note

Aldi's PurAqua line covers still, sparkling, flavored, and Italian mineral waters, all at rock-bottom prices.

Pure Filter (PUR)

This one only came up in the #8999 awards episode, where best water filter went to Berkey Big.

About Pure Filter (PUR)

Pure filter means PUR, the home water-filter brand invented in Minneapolis and now owned by Helen of Troy. Its faucet filters are certified to reduce lead, mercury, and chlorine.

Tru Alka (True Water / Alka True)

A bracket champion in its own right. It beat Llanllyr, then a five-way field, then won the final with water he called "just good and pure no bad aftertaste." Later it pushed Hawaiian Springs hard, both got two thumbs up, but Hawaiian tasted "a little bit better a little cleaner a little bit more pure."

About Tru Alka (True Water / Alka True)

Tru Alka is a premium alkaline water around pH 9.5, purified by reverse osmosis, then ionized and enhanced with calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium. BPA-free, zero calories, marketed for pH balance and hydration.