Un-Grossing

In the comments for a previous Lifestraw sale, we found the following:

I got one of these earlier this year solely to get rid of the nasty taste of airport water fountain water

That came from a user named ‘dontatme,’ which is why we decided not to at them. Although, a word to the wise, dontatme: you could likely avoid at-ing by providing more detail in your initial post. Luckily for us, the rest of you did not abide by the username and asked the necessary follow-up: did it work?

According to dontatme:

It works well enough to be my main bottle for travel, knowing that I can put basically any water in there and it won’t taste funny

There’s a new filter taste that is also a bit unpleasant but nowhere near as bad. I used it as my main water bottle in the office for a week beforehand and by the time I left for my trip the filter taste was gone

That last bit sounds slightly unpleasant, but @mike808 (whose user name does not prohibit at-ing) had a useful suggestion:

That initial taste is likely from the activated charcoal. For the home use filters (Brita, Pur) they recommend you soak the filter the first time for 5-10 minutes, drain, repeat, then use normally. These may benefit from following the same process.

This was, however, not part of the instructions, and dontatme wasn’t sure if the activated charcoal was what they were tasting anyway:

I assumed that the taste was from the membrane microfilter and not the carbon filter, but I could easily be wrong. Regardless, it went away after a bit of use and wasn’t that strong.

Obviously, we include all this to say, if your first sip isn’t perfect, maybe give it some time (or a soak). But also, we wanted to highlight this very mundane reason that dontatme wanted one of these in the first place: icky-tasting airport water.

Often, with products like this, there’s a temptation to highlight the most extreme use case. You’re lost in the woods! You’re parched! You see a clear-looking babbling brook! You lower your Lifestraw bottle into its flow and drink freely, without fear of what might swim in those waters! YOU’RE SAVED! Or something like that.

But it’s just as useful for de-nastifying some water that’s technically potable but a bit unpleasant.

So get a couple for your next hike, whether it’s through the forest or the corridors of O’Hare.