Sawyer Mini and water bottles

[Brad Rogers]

I have been a Aquimira Drops user for the past 9-10 years and repackage them into smaller bottles with a 1.1oz total weight.  I have also been a devout believer in 32oz Gatorade bottles (1.8oz each).

This past year I went to Brooks Range Alaska for two weeks and didn’t treat my water until we got to some of the larger rivers, and it was refreshing to not have the “Aquimira Taste” that I have always been able to taste, but put up with due to the light weight.

For Christmas I received the Sawyer Mini filter and want to try in on a few trips this year.  It weighs 37g or 1.3oz on my scale.  The lightest way to use it I guess is just to screw it to a bottle and drink straight from it.  That has led me to the great bottle search 2016 to find hard sided “standard” threaded bottles.

Here is what I have found so far:

32oz Desani Water Bottle – 25g or 0.9oz

33.8oz Smartwater Bottle – 39g or 1.4oz

23.7oz Smartwater Bottle – 31g or 1.1oz  (the flip top lid itself weighs 5g or 0.1oz)

Are there any other bottles that people should try?  Both of the 1 L bottles make it so tall with the Sawyer screwed into place.  I would prefer a shorter/squater bottle similar to the 32oz Gatorade bottles.

I would use this as a gravity filter is I could figure out a set up light enough.  I like drinking out of hard sided bottles so my set up would have to include one of those.

Is it ok to go a week without backflushing with reasonable water quality, or do I need to always bring the 1.1oz syringe with me?

Any other tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

[J R]

The threads on the SmartWater bottle match the threads on the Sawyer. Most other water bottle threads don’t match, but some people say then can get a good seal anyway while others, like me, can’t get the mis-matched threads to seal.

SW makes bottles in 0.7L and 0.5L sizes as well.

You will want more than just the one bottle with you, as a backup in case your bottle breaks. The Sawyer bags as well as Evernew bags make good weight-effective ways to carry a bunch of water for dry camp and such, and the threads match.

I tried the method of drinking straight from the filter but found that with the squeezing required and lower flow through the filter than say a water fountain I was drinking less than I needed to, so I’ve switched to a system where I have a clean water bottle (doesn’t need to match the filter’s threads, in fact better if it doesn’t) and then a SmartWater for a “dirty” bottle and bags for tanking up.

Hard to say if you would be OK without needing to backflush for a week of filtering “reasonable water quality”, depends on your definition. You should rig up a pre-filter so that the bigger floaties don’t reach the filter.

[Jerry Adams]

there are forum topics about the mini clogging more than a regular Squeeze.  With a Squeeze, I regularly do 4 or 5 days without thinking about taking the backflush.  I’d do a week.  Mini?  maybe should have the backflush syringe?  My backflush syringe weighs 1.2 ounces, so you’d be about the same as having a Squeeze without syringe.

Since you have aquamira drops, maybe take them as backup and just do Mini without backflush.  Some people have good results with Mini.  Depends on the water.  Make sure you backflush and test before trip.

Most water and soda bottles I’ve used have the same thread size as the Squeeze.  Some water bottles are extra lightweight and have smaller diameter cap so there’s no way that would work.  I’ve never seen a water bottle with the thread pitch on Platypus water bags, which are the ones that sometimes work with Sawyer filter even though the thread pitch is different.  I think the plastic flexes a little so it works, until the plastic gets a few years old and is stiffer.

[Matthew / BPL]

I backflushed using a Smartwater Sport Cap every 15-20 liters along the JMT last summer. I use the 2 Liter Sawyer bag in a gravity setup with a little bit of string and some tubing. I took the (basically useless) 16 ounce bag the mini came with and cut the spout end off and use that to keep everything together in my pack and as a scoop in shallow water to fill the bag. 

[Matthew / BPL]

That said, I am ready to move on to either Aquamira or a Steripen. I easily lost 45 minutes a day filtering water on the JMT. This forced me to take breaks along a creek rather than where I wanted to take a break. I’d rather keep my water routine shorter and break when and where I want to.

The Sawyer system works well for me on overnight trips and slower trips with Scouts but I won’t use it next time I am trying to cover lots of miles day after day.

[Paul Wagner]

We have a couple of the 64oz. Sawyer bottles.  Sometimes we just fill them up and carry them to a spot where we’d rather have a rest…it’s the same weight whether the water is filtered or not.

[Kenneth Keating]

The mini does take longer to filter water.  I’ve switch to the regular Sawyer because of that. It’s only a little added weight, but a great decrease in time.   In gravity mode, with 40″ of hose length I can filter at a rate of 1Liter/Minute.  Without the hose the gravity filter rate is 1/5 Liter/Minute, so the extra pressure with the hose really decreases the time. I’ve used the Aquamira drops in the past, but what I really like about the Sawyer when thirsty is drinking Sierra Nevada cold stream water immediately.  With the Aquamira the water was warm by the time I could drink it; it just wasn’t as refreshing.

[Jerry Adams]

maybe squeeze mode is better – 2 minutes to filter a pint

and yeah, carry dirty water and filter when convenient

water that’s used for cleaning doesn’t have to be filtered

water that I’m going to boil doesn’t have to be filtered

[Dean F.]

I’m with Matthew and others- a small water bladder, Sawyer or Evernew, is pretty light for a gravity setup.  Like you, I prefer to drink from hard bottles so the bladder is usually in my pack empty, but on those occasions when I do need to tank up between distant water sources I can just carry it “dirty” in the bladder.

This is part of my ‘standard system’ to cover 95% of my backpacking needs, with the intent of keeping things as thought-free as possible so that I get out more.  If I have to take two hours to plot things out to the last fraction of an ounce (windshirt or rain jacket?) before I hit the trail then I find that I do it less.  I’ll take the extra two ounces instead.

[David Thomas]

If I’m understanding the Brad correctly, he wants to screw a Sawyer Mini onto a Gatorade bottle.  But the Mini only fits on the more common, narrower, PET soda bottle style threads (and a few other narrow-mouth bottles).

So make an adaptor.  A female-Gatorade to male-soda-bottle adaptor.  Drill a hole in a Gatorade bottle cap, cut the top off a soda bottle and then heat-weld, or JB-Weld or hot-glue them together.  I work more in HDPE then in PET but the while the soda bottles are PET, the lids seem to be LDPE or HDPE.  Then close that adapter with a regular soda-bottle cap.

I too prefer wide-bottles on overnight trips.  Soda bottles are fine to fill up at home for a day hike, but while backpacking I want a wide-mouth bottle for easier filling in awkward and difficult spots.  Like when the stream is 10 feet below you and tie a string around the neck to lower it onto the water surface.

Also, the Gatorade bottle is ideal for use with a SteriPen because the SteriPen sits, self-supported on the Gatorade bottle opening.

+1, adamantly, for bringing an extra cap or two along*.  Especially if you MYOG your own adapter.  Make two.  There’s your extra if you drop one in a fast-moving stream, or if your weld or glue joint fails.

*A few items weigh SO little and yet make SUCH a difference if you need them.  An extra bottle cap (2 grams soda bottle, 4 grams Gatorade bottle), an extra mini-Bic (11 grams), and 25 feet of 80-pound-test braided fishing line (6 grams) are in that category for me.

And, I keep saying this, but DUMPSTER DIVE!  Go the recycling center and, well, RECYCLE some stuff from the bins.  There’s no end of soda bottles, Gatorade bottles, etc, many with the caps on.

Edited to add: I’m also big on bringing MYOGed water bottle adapters to use the bottle as a shower head.  And one with a vacuum-break tube to keep an inverted bottle at atmospheric pressure and let the water flow freely through a filter or shower head.

[Matthew / BPL]

I’d be curious to see a photo of the showerhead with a vacuum break.

[Chris Chandler]

Brad–

You’ve likely made a decision by now, but in the event a future BPL’er has the same quandary, here are my two cents. TL:DR – The simpler your setup with the Mini, the better a choice it is.

I’m a recent convert from Aqua Mira to a Sawyer Mini for the same reason that I didn’t like corrupting the taste of my wilderness water. I had my Aqua Mira system down to a good routine for two people using a little premix dropper bottle and all, and felt that it was not only the lightest, but one of the more convenient options I could think of, until I tried a trip with the Mini.

I still can’t speak to the flow longevity, which might become an issue, but I will say that it seems like a lot of people’s complaints about the Mini stem from trying to make filtering water way more convoluted than it needs to be.

Sawyer Mini, totally wet + backflush syringe = 3.3 oz. So with the syringe, it’s an ounce or two heavier than my Aqua Mira setup w/ bottles depending on trip duration. I think it’s vastly more convenient, though. It worked great shared between my girlfriend and I. We carried only dirty water in a scoop-and-go method, and left the filter attached to a bladder and drank straight from it. The combination of sucking from the end like a straw, and rolling the bladder, made the flow rate more than ample. Then just swap the filter to the next bladder when that one is empty. We used the cook pot to scoop water from shallow sources and pour into bladders. Squeezed ~400 ml into a pot for meals, and that was a whopping 1.5 minutes or less of filtering.

Gravity filter? Maybe, if I had to filter gallons of water and share it among a crew of 8 the next morning. Otherwise, why bother when I can just filter and drink simultaneously? Putting it onto hard SW bottles? Sure, if you really feel you need a hard bottle, but then you’ll experience a performance drop because you’re trying to use the filter in a way that’s counter to its design as you create a vacuum pulling water from the hard bottle. Squeeze filter from bladder to hard bottle, or another “clean” bladder? Sure. But why?

Going lighter is largely about simplifying, but it seems people have overcomplicated using the Sawyer Mini, and created a host of new issues that are remedied by just using a simpler system with the Mini.

[Colin M]

I’ll second Chris.
I find no reason to hassle with a gravity system unless I’m with my kids or something. I also don’t know why you’d want a hard bottle? Smart bottles are super durable (I used 2 for over 40 days last year), screw directly on and you can back-flush with the sport top.

Not stopping to filter is kind of the point of these so keep it simple:
1. Walk by a creek
2. dip my two smart bottles in said creek
3. keep walking as I screw a cap on one and the filter on the other.
4. Drink right from the filter.

Takes maybe 10 seconds to stop and fill the two bottles. Just don’t forget they are “dirty” water and fill up someone else with them!

[Larry De La Briandais]

I hate drinking from a hose and would rather spend a few minutes to filter my water into a bottle than drink from a hose.  It’s fast enough for me and I can avoid the hose.  ;^)

 

[Chris Chandler]

Larry — just clarifying, when you say you hate drinking from a hose, are you referring to using the Mini in-line in a bladder setup?

No hoses in my setup. Drinking straight from the filter

[Larry De La Briandais]

Yup, never thought of drinking straight from the filter…  I’ll have to consider that.  :^)

 

[Colin M]

straight from filter, no need to complicate things with hoses on a water bottle!

Filtering water can add 1/2 an hour or more to your daily travel time just standing around on big mileage days. I’d much prefer using that time to either cover more ground or at beautiful locations where I can take pictures or fish.

[BPLwiia]

I drink right from the SM filter too. I also bring two SmartWater bottles and do the same dip method and fill both. I would prefer a smaller/shorter bottle. Maybe I’m delusional but I think I remember SmartWater in a smaller container which my SM fit just perfectly on it.

EDIT:

I just found this link and SM is sold in a smaller 16.9oz (500ml) container:

https://www.amazon.com/Glaceau-Smart-Water-500ml-Pack/dp/B00CP79A84/ref=pd_sim_325_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00CP79A84&pd_rd_r=A1RNZ2NFQJ0TJF31K98W&pd_rd_w=x1fwb&pd_rd_wg=VMDj3&psc=1&refRID=A1RNZ2NFQJ0TJF31K98W

 

 

[BPLwiia]

As a side note, there are those who do not want a large bottle and use the Mini on long day hikes or overnights where you wish to keep weight to a minimum.

The Mini <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>does</span> fit perfectly on a Dasani 16.9oz bottle. It is not hard sided but that doesn’t matter to me on a short trip. Thought I would pass that along.

 

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