Making sure a spirit tastes the way the way it should at its final ABV is one of the most important jobs of any distiller.
The quality of your proofing water—as experienced distillers know well—can be the difference between an exceptional product and a stack of customer complaints. That’s why it’s vital to use water that won’t degrade the flavor or appearance of the final spirit.
For most distillers, this means using the purest water because dissolved solids and salts in water can cause unwanted flavor changes and hazes that make customers wary. Unfortunately, most water sources have significant deposits of those unwanted compounds. While standard water treatments remove some of them, such treatments are far from sufficient.
That’s why you’ll need to perform your own water purification if you want suitable proofing water. There are a couple of ways to go about it.