Healthy, great-tasting water. Now make it exciting.

House rule worth stealing: serve water from glass, ceramic or glass bakeware - never plastic cups or bottles. It tastes cleaner, looks better, and a jug on the table gets refilled. Filmed as an illustration of the idea.

Filtration gets you clean water. This page is the layer on top of clean: fizz, flavor and function - the packets, drops, sparkling makers and infusers that turn "I should drink more water" into something you actually look forward to.

1. Add fizz: sparkling water makers

Carbonation is the single biggest upgrade for people quitting soda: the bite tricks your brain into thinking it's a treat. Carbonate filtered water and the fizz tastes cleaner, because there's no chlorine note underneath it.

Running cost reality check: whichever machine you pick, the CO2 cylinder is the subscription. Budget roughly 25-40 cents a liter in gas with exchanges, more with mail-in refills - still a fraction of canned sparkling water, which is the comparison that matters.

2. Flavor drops & packets

The cheapest experiment on this page: a few dollars tells you whether flavored water sticks for you. The real dividing line isn't flavor - it's the sweetener.

3. Electrolytes: flavor with a job to do

After a workout, in summer heat, or on a low-carb diet, plain water sometimes isn't the whole answer - sodium, potassium and magnesium are what you actually sweat out. Two honest notes: most people eating normal meals get enough electrolytes from food, so treat these as situational rather than mandatory; and if you drink reverse-osmosis water, a mineral/electrolyte addition doubles as remineralization - the same trick Gary Brecka's "RO + remineralization" routine is built on.

4. Infuse it yourself

The zero-additive route: a pitcher or bottle with a perforated core you fill with cucumber and mint, strawberries and basil, orange slices and ginger - or cold-brew tea and hibiscus. Refrigerator-cold, 2-12 hours, and filtered water does double duty here: no chlorine taste competing with the fruit. Infuser pitchers and bottles are sold everywhere (Prodyne's Fruit Infusion pitcher is the classic shape) for roughly the price of two cases of canned seltzer, and the "refills" are whatever is already in your crisper drawer.

House rules for the fun layer

• Filter first, flavor second - always in that order, for taste as much as safety.
• Water-only machines mean water only. Carbonating sugary drinks in a SodaStream or Aarke can foul the nozzle and void warranties; if you want to fizz juice or wine, that's the Drinkmate's whole reason to exist.
• Wash the bottles. Flavor residue plus a warm car is a biofilm starter kit - rinse daily, deep-clean weekly.
• Mind your teeth with the acidic stuff. Sparkling and citrus drinks are mildly acidic; having them with food and rinsing with plain water afterwards is the standard dentist advice.
• Check the sweetener, not just the calories. Unsweetened (True Citrus), stevia (Stur, Ultima) and sucralose (MiO and most soda mixes) are genuinely different products wearing similar packaging.

Curious water questions

The stranger corners of the water world, investigated the same way we grade filters: moon water, glow-in-the-dark water, coloring water for kids, crystal water bottles, waters that claim to cure cancer, and psilocybin in water.