Im curious about this, though I think I may know the answer. My guess is that no, filtered water wont make a monumental difference. And Im not talking a Pur or Brita filter. Im talking like MEGA filter lol. Read on if you wish to see what I mean by mega filter.

My question ultimately is can trace elements of say chlorine, flouride, and other unnecessary crap in the water hurt yields? Most teks Ive seen say use distilled/deionized water, some say tap, some say filtered.

My own personal water filtration system is an 8 stage filtration from my tap that removes flouride, chlorine, metals, and and pretty much any other contaminants that really dont belong in water.

Using water that pure, would it have an advantage for greater yields during extraction?

Any water will do the job (even tap) but the more charged ions you can introduce...the better the reaction. (It won't affect yield)
Mineral, Spring or Filtered is preferred.

'Dead' water need not apply

Cyb - One of my friends has one of those alkaline water ionizer things. Would water from one of those be preferable to regular filtered water, or are those machines b.s.?

Look up 'reverse osmosis de-ionized', or RODI for short, water filtration. It's what is used in the salt water aquarium world where ANY traces can lead to algae blooms, fish, and especially invertebrate death if any tap water is used. The filters are not too expensive either. Bulk reef supply is a good site to start if interested.

You want different levels of ions in the solution at different steps in the process. For the freeze/thaw portion distilled/deionized water is actually best. You want a mild ionic strength during the defat to help push the oils out, but not the alkaloids that are borderline organic like DMT(yes even as a salt it is slightly soluble in some NPS's. You really only want to have the charge at full blast when your pulling your spice, after a nice defat. At this point you want the spice to find its existence in the aqueous layer highly disfavorable.

Most fish shops sell RO water pretty cheap (£1.75 for 5 litres in the uk) so you really don't need a unit (unless you actually have a big fish tank) just buy a bit and experiment away.

or you could do what Randomness suggests on the small scale

Thanks for the info folks!

I couldnt splurge on full on RO water system just yet. I will when I can though. I got myself a 3 cartridge, 8 stage filtration system, the company that makes it is called Crystal Quest. The system has been excellent. The cartridges last 12-18 months and aren't expensive to replace at all.

I highly suggest any one take a look if they're interested in removing excess garbage from their municipal water supply before consuming it! Cooking with the water and even drinking tea or making my once or twice a week turkish coffees have been taken to the next level just from all the crap being removed from the water.

As long as you mix the cleanest, purest water you can procure on planet earth with any plant material, you're going to put in the water all sorts of things form the plant material that include (apart from the alkaloids of interest obviously) sodium, potassium, and calcium ions, chloride, fluoride, sulphate, phosphate, carbonate and etc stuff that are commonly found in tap water. So it's pointless to use ultra pure water just to make it "dirty" in the very next step of an extraction.

Presence of the chlorine-based sanitiser compounds may be a problem or may be seen as unwanted in exractions; some chlorine-based sanitisers can be boiled off of tap water, but others cannot - check the water composition and treatment procedure of your local water supply if you feel that chlorine-based comounds are bad mojo in any way.

Boiling tap water will also remove all carbonates present. Letting boiled water that has its carbonates removed settle overnight, calcium and phosphates will also be removed to a large extent by sedimentation.

OO Oooo How about sparkling water? The sparkles will add increased magic to any extraction (that's what sparkles do).

IME I have used primarily tap water, and my extractions have always turned out fine. I like to use lots of water during the first boil stage, as this allows the greatest potential transfer of goodies to the water. It's just inconvenient to go buy a bunch of jugs of water, when I have more than I need coming right out of my faucet!

(Note: the second paragraph was included simply to make up for the joke I started this post with.)