What Is Causing Your Ice to Taste Bad?

If you enjoy your drinks frosty cold and with an accompaniment of ice, there may come a day when you are in for a nasty surprise. That ice-cold water many not taste clean and cool, but rather it tastes distinctly funky. While you may worry that it is your water, all it takes is a little investigation to discover that it is actually the ice that is tainting the flavor. If your water tastes fine, what is wrong with your ice?

Open Food in the Freezer

You want to keep food in your freezer well-sealed specifically to protect the food. However, you also want to keep food sealed because it can taint the flavor of your ice. Your ice is exposed to the open air, and when there are smells floating around in your freezer, the ice can take that on as flavor.

Old Water Filter

If you can’t remember the last time you changed your water filter, it is probably long past time that you do. The water filter in your refrigerator is meant to filter out particles and unpleasant flavors so your appliance makes ice with crisp tasting, clean water. However, as the filter ages, it can actually have the opposite function and release bad flavors into the water as the membrane breaks down until it is changed.

Stale Water Line

The supply line to your refrigerator is pretty well sealed and it usually does not allow the water to take on any odd flavors after it has gone through the water filter. However, what can happen is that you turn off your ice maker and the water sits in the supply line. It sits for weeks or months and the water can become stale. This stale water produces bad tasting ice. You can check this by flushing the supply line and making new ice. However, typically if this is the cause, your second batch of ice after the first bad one with taste just fine.