Hey,

I've been using a BWT pitcher (for brewing) for a year now, but I want to upgrade.

What should I look for in a filtration system for water coming out of my tap?

Reverse osmosis and mineralizer a good option?

If possible always best to have a separate drinking water tap. Why use ultra filtered water for dishwashing. Although I do a quick rinse with R.O. water on pots / pans as it eliminates hardwater spots. I add minerals to my water post R.O. since I manually fill espresso machine boiler.
If you have hardwater a R.O. system with remineralizer will be effective. There are limitations on hardness of water being filtered and other water conditions such as rust that need conditioning as not to damage or clog the R.O. membrane. There are some none R.O. ultra fine filtration methods depending on quality that are effective while maintaining greater mineral content in treated water.

Hi Capac - First, get a water test of your tap water. You really want to make a decision about what filter to purchase based on what is actually in your water. Otherwise, you could end up with the wrong filter.

Absolutely, you must know what's in your water before deciding how to treat it. You can have it analyzed, or contact your water utility for their analysis. You can usually just assume that you have disinfectant products (chlorine, maybe chloramine, etc) that can be treated with simple carbon filters. Then you may or may not need some sort of softening, and in a worst case may need to resort to reverse osmosis (RO) to remove special problems like high chloride or high silica in your water.

If you can get numbers for total hardness and alkalinity you can analyze for scale (per Jim Schulman's Insanely Long Water FAQ - here) . A lot of folks do their own analysis for alkalinity and hardness using kits that are sold primarily to aquarium owners.

Numbers for chloride and sulfate are helpful to decide if your water has high corrosion potential that can't be easily treated with simple filters and softeners. And if your water is from volcanic sources, you may want to know the concentration of silica.

Thanks for your answers everyone!

My water isn't super hard, but there will be some scaling without it being filtered. Water here is better than in most places.

If I understand correctly, I could get away with just a (correct) filter, but RO + remineralizer is ideal?

I add bottle mineral water to my R.O. water. Does not require much mineral water to raise to appropriate level and couldn't be easier. The use of an inexpensive electronic TDS meter makes this task a lot easier.

That sounds really simple. How do the remineralizers work then?

Good read here. https://www.aquatell.ca/blogs/aquatell/ ... is-systems

How about distilled water with added minerals? Distilled water can be found really cheaply, just like the right minerals...

Sure, distilled water is expensive here vs RO due to the process involved usaually involving heat and condensation.