Does anyone else sometimes experience a sweetish taste to water coming out the hot water tap? It’s a honey-like sweetness. I’ve experienced it in other countries as well so I’m pretty sure it’s not something in the supply, but something to do with the hot water tank and what goes on in there over time. It’s usually more noticeable when the water is coming out really hot (can smell it) but lately at home I can taste it. Would a filter help?
If you’re wondering why I’m drinking water from the hot water tap it’s because I fill my bottles while waiting for the water to get hot - running clean water down the drain feels criminal to me.
Crap. I always use hot water to boil pasta and potatoes, and sometimes instant coffee when I’m in a hurry. No sweet taste here, but pretty old building. Oops.
Lead acetate is called sugar of lead, and has a sweet taste. I don’t know if it’s always responsible for the sweet taste of water with lead in it or not, but I’ve never heard of any other lead compound that is supposed to have a sweet taste.
Lead Acetate has been blamed for causing lead poisoning in the Roman Empire, and even with its Fall. The reasoning is indirect – the process of making a sweetener in Roman times was to boil down wines, and it is conjectured that if done in lead vessels, or those with lead soldering, then plentiful lead acetate would be formed. AFAIK, no recipe specifically calls for leaded vessels, though.
I was surprised, on touring a historic home in Washington DC, to learn that they kept white wine in special metal containers. I would have thought that this would spoil the taste. But, again, if the vessels or lead solder interacted with the wine, it might have sweetened it.
For that matter, storing fortified wine in lead crystal decanters (as opposed to simply drinking from them) has been seriously proposed as a mechanism for gout (!). There’s apparently statistical evidence to back this up (Lead glass - Wikipedia )
So – lead poisoning from drinking from containers that might leach lead out has certainly occurred in the past, and might have been sorta intentional (although the ill effects weren’t appreciated), because it gave a sweet taste.
So, yeah, I’d have m water tested. There’s a lot of “historic” water piping in older dwellings that still has lead pipe. They did a major replacement of pipes in the Beacon Hill area of Boston back in the 1970s to get rid of a lot of this.
I only use hot water for showers or handwashing. I was always told not to use hot water for drinking or cooking because of the sediment that may gather in some (most?) hot water tanks. So there’s another reason to reach for the cold knob.
