The State’s best tap water has been decided at the 2018 Queensland Water Taste Test

GETTING a taste for tap water might be a little more colourful than you thought, with 60 water swillers deciding on the best- tasting tap water in Queensland — including a sample from the Tugun desalination plant. Guess where it sat?

ANGEL tears, a whole meal, gnarly, refreshing and old tyres are just some terms used to describe the best eight tap waters in Queensland.

The two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen solutions made it through regional finals to compete in QWater’s Queensland Best of the Best Water Taste Test at Gold Coast Turf Club yesterday.

Gladstone Area Water Board chief operating officer Darren Barlow said he tasted too much sulphur in one water sample.

About 60 testers from local governments across the state swilled and searched for notes from the “water tasting wheel — as used by professionals”.

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These included: fishy, chlorinous, mouthfeel, sweet, flowery and earthy.

The last of the blind tests was so earthy people described it as “a whole meal and old tyres”.

That sample was from a bore out of Toowoomba which services 21 homes.

Toowoomba Regional Council principal engineer Jack Passier said it wasn't just about how it tasted, it was also how it felt in the mouth.

“It’s a little bit sulphery at the end,” said Gladstone Area Water Board chief executive Darren Barlow.

“At the back end of having it I am after a softness of the water and that you don’t get any residue or after taste.”

As bore the brunt of bad reviews, fractions separated the top three places, Mackay, Livingstone (at Yeppoon) and the Desalination Plant at Tugun.

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Troy Pettiford from the Whitsunday Shire Council ponders the samples. Picture Glenn Hampson

Toowoomba Regional Council principal engineer Jack Passier said the different samples tasted distinctively different.

“Most of it is about taste but also how it smells, how it sits in the mouth and the aftertaste,” he said.

“I’m looking for something that is not too earthy, not bitter, no aftertaste but if it has an aftertaste that it is pleasant and sort of a soft water.

Whitsunday Regional Council chief operating officer and QWater vice chairman Troy Pettiford said he wanted a water which was not to earthy but didn’t have a strong chlorine aftertaste.

“The main thing when looking at a good source of supply you want something that will be there for a long time,” he said.

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“We are looking for good secure networks and the taste test. You want water supply that is pleasant and refreshing but not have high calcium in it so it doesn’t make your shower screens all white.

Mackay won the competition which greatly pleased its chief operating officer Nicole Davis.

“We get our water from the Pioneer River and then it gets clarified, it gets filtered and chlorinated and then goes into town,” she said.

She put the quality of water down to her staff who were able to keep the relatively old Nebo Water Treatment Plant running.

Originally published as The State’s best tap water has been decided at the 2018 Queensland Water Taste Test