I remember a few years ago I was trying to show off SunniPath to my father.  I let him watch one of the live sessions with Shaykh Hamza Karamali on Shafi fiqh. It was the first class of the semester and he was teaching the various rulings of water. He explained that we could no longer use water for wudu’ if one of the three characteristics have changed, i.e. color, taste, or odor.  My dad then marveled at the wisdom of the sunnah as he quoted another scholar, “Just look at the sunnah acts that we do before the fard acts of wudu’:  we wash our hands and bring the water to our mouth so we can see the color; we rinse our mouth so we can taste the water; and then we rinse are nose so we can smell the odor.”