But what I like most of all (and this is where I get weird looks)…
Y’know how you go through the drive through and get a cup o’ something, and you eat the food around 12ish and the cup o’ something and the leftover ice sits on your desk until 3ish, when you finally remember to finish it off? Yeah, I like that. So my favorite tap water flavor addition is ice and whatever I have in the house. Gatorade, OJ, that 1/4 can of flat Coke - doesn’t matter as long as it’s cold.
I don’t mean to sound stupid, but do you not have, say, orange squash/cordial in America? If I’m skint, I wouldn’t think of buying essential oils or start flavouring my water with mint leaves - rather buy a bottle of cheap dilutable fruit squash and enjoy…
The closest I come to squash is either sekanjabin or a particular brand of 100% cranberry juice, no sweetening at all. It is too overpoweringly sour to be drunk like that, but put a glass fulll of ice, 1 oz of the cranberry juice and a few drops of liquid splena, and top it off with water and it beats the commercial presweetened cranberry juice cocktails all hands down.
America is the land of premixed and powders … if we cant pop open a bottle, or mix in a packet of powder it is too much work…
I’m not sure what fruit squash is. Is it fruit juice concentrate? We have that here, frozen mush in a paper or plastic “can” which you dump into a pitcher and add water to. It’s not very cheap though. I mean, it’s not incredibly expensive, but a can of frozen concentrate makes about 2 quarts of fruit juice for about US$3. Kool-Aid is cheaper, making about 6 2-quart batches for around US$3. A small bottle of peppermint essential or flavoring oil will make dozens of gallons of mint water for US$3.
I really like cranberry or pomegranate juice dilute with seltzer water over ice, but it’s not really a cheap beverage.
Here are some squash examples. You can get cheaper versions, but a bottle would cost around £1, and I’m sure would last one person around three days. I’m not saying it’s great - but it would seem an obvious cheap way to add taste to water (in the UK at least).
Since money’s an issue, this isn’t the most immediately viable option, but we bought a Home Soda Maker and it has been awesome. I figure that it has already paid for itself in not having to haul packs of soda water home, and haul the empties to the recycling, along with saving the cost of the soda water.
It comes with flavorings, but I don’t even know where we put those. Our favorite is just the fizzy water, or using it with homemade tonic water mix, as the stuff commercially available is so grotesquely over-sweetened.
The good thing about tap water on the old farms was it was always tasty. I really like that old iron taste. It’s not bland. It was terrible for washing clothes though. I am serious about liking the taste.
Ok, it’s not exactly OP material in that you have to buy something, but;
For Work purposes, I like to take my 1 quart water bottle, put in about a dozen ice cubes, pour in one (1) can of something, and fill the rest of the way with filtered water.
Minute maid lite is good for this. The raspberry-passionfruit is really good diluted like this. In fact, it’s the ONLY way that I can tolerate the cherry-limeaid stuff, which is downright vile straight. One can of iced tea product is good too.
Find a 12 pack on sale, one can per day = 12 days out of one pack.