Water as an ingredient, not a utility
A beverage plant's water is not supporting the product — it largely is the product. That changes the engineering question from "is it safe?" to "is it the same, every batch?" Municipal water in South Africa varies week to week within its SANS 241 envelope, and a recipe that tasted right in May can drift by September purely on source-water chemistry.
Brewing: alkalinity is the fight
Brewing references — Palmer and Kaminski's "Water" is the modern standard — frame brewing liquor around residual alkalinity: the tug-of-war between alkalinity (which pushes mash pH up) and calcium/magnesium (which pull it down). The mash wants to land at pH 5.2 to 5.6. Pale beers need low residual alkalinity — published guidance puts alkalinity below roughly 50 mg/L as CaCO3, and closer to 25 mg/L for the palest styles — while dark, roasted grists tolerate and even benefit from more. The classic city profiles tell the story: Pilsen's near-zero alkalinity produced pilsner; Dublin's high alkalinity suited stout.
The other non-negotiable is dechlorination. Chlorine and chloramine react with wort phenolics to form chlorophenols, whose flavour thresholds sit in the low parts-per-billion — a medicinal, plaster-like taint that no downstream process removes. Carbon contact ahead of the brewhouse is standard, and in chloraminated supply areas (Rand Water's network applies chloramination at booster stations) the carbon must be sized for chloramine's much longer contact time — catalytic carbon is the practical answer.
Modern practice for style-accurate liquor is RO-and-rebuild: strip the water to a consistent low-mineral baseline with reverse osmosis, then add back calcium sulphate or calcium chloride to hit the target profile. It costs more than adjusting municipal water, but it makes the recipe portable and repeatable — the water is the same in February and August, in Cape Town and Polokwane.
Carbonated beverages and bottling
The major bottlers publish parts of their water thinking. Coca-Cola's food-service water specification — the published document for post-mix installations — requires, among other limits: zero coliforms in 100 ml, turbidity at or below 0.5 NTU, total chlorine at or below 0.5 mg/L, total alkalinity at or below 150 mg/L, hardness at or below 100 mg/L and TDS at or below 500 mg/L, delivered through NSF/ANSI 42-certified filtration with demonstrated chloramine reduction. Bottling-plant internal standards are tighter still on alkalinity — low alkalinity protects flavour stability and carbonation behaviour — which is why bottling water treatment is typically membrane-based with precise remineralisation.
Bottled water itself is its own legal category in South Africa. Regulation R718 of 2006 splits the market into natural waters, waters defined by origin, and prepared waters. "Prepared water" is the category most treatment plants produce: water from any supply — including municipal — that has undergone acceptable treatment. The label rules are specific: the product must be called prepared water, must state the treatment method (the regulation's own examples include "reverse osmosis" and "ozonated"), and must carry the phrase "from a public or private distribution system" where the source is tap water. Natural mineral and spring waters, by contrast, may not be bulk-transported from source and carry their own composition labelling. The regulation's annexure sets the product limits and points at SANS 1657 and SANS 1862 for methods — bottled water compliance is not simply "meets SANS 241".
Rule of thumb
For brewing, watch two numbers before all others: alkalinity (against the style you are brewing) and chlorine/chloramine (which must be zero at the brewhouse). For bottling and post-mix, work from the published spec of the brand you supply — and if the business plan says "bottled water", read R718 before naming the product, because the treatment you choose is printed on the label.