Water types or filtered effect on taste?
Im in the UK, hard water. I remember hearing soft water might be preferable?
can anything be done to improve the taste of tea or is it snake oil?
Oh, just for the record, our tap water is cleaner than bottled. My dad is a geologist senior lecturer and tests it for his classes. More stringent rules..
But yeah, back ot, who does what and is it noticeable? I heard Oolong can be affected by hard water.
I use a Zero Water filter for most of my tea. I will sometimes use bottled but the Zero Water filter works pretty well. I don’t know that it does anything to soften the water though, it just removes all the particles.
Most grocery stores (where I live at least) offer some kind of “artisan” spring water. I can’t really overstate how important having good water is to making good tea…
i dont know what kind of water im using. the tap water is good but should i still put it through the filter?
Even “good” tap water will have a lot in it to alter the flavor of tea. It should definitely be filtered. I use the Zero Water filter.
The nicest thing about the Zero Water filter is it comes with a testing meter too determine when your filter needs replacing. You don’t have to replace it monthly but when their are too many particles in your water. I never know just how much water I run through the filter.
I think it’s personal, honestly. I use my well water with no filtration at all for tea and I like my tea very much. I have also used bottled spring water or regular bottled water before and I can never tell a difference.
Both of my parents have stinky well water and even that works fine for tea, but I do prefer bottled at their houses. There is too much iron in one and some other stinky thing in the other.
this is also the sort of thing i have read, (this from another forum but ive read elsewhere):
’Soft water brings out all the flavors in a tea, both good and bad. So if the tea and the brewing technique are top-notch, this will provide best results, otherwise your results will vary.
Hard water releases flavors selectively from tea. A tea that might taste unpleasant using soft water will probably taste alright using hard water, because many of the unpleasant flavors will remain in the leaves. A delicate tea might taste bland in hard water for the same reason, because many of the pleasant flavors remain in the leaves. Lu Yu, the ancient Chinese tea master, believed that hard water (water from stalactite springs was his term) is the best choice for tea. On the other hand, in his day the treatment of tea was much harsher, and it was trickier to control the brewing variables.’
My tap water (city wells, chlorine-only) leaves floating films across tea, extracting color but only murky flavors, and filtering doesn’t help. It does peppermint and herbals just fine, though, and I like it for cooking veggies.
Reverse osmosis is what I’ve settled upon for tea brewing, which mostly Indian black loose-leaf and British-style bagged blends, with some Lupicia for fun every once in a while.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that RO removes minerals from water and hence is not ideal for tea which requires the water to be mineral rich. Anyone know something more about this?
I have absolutely noticed a difference in the way my tea tastes depending on what water I’m using i.e. using Culligan water to make tea always, without a single exception, brews a disaster. That said, to drink Culligan water is amazing. When I make tea, I either ruse tap water or water from the Brida filter. I agree that it’s ultimately an issue of preference. But that aside, wanted to confirm that water makes a huge difference in how tea tastes.
I have to say I notice a huge difference in Brita vs. Chlorinated tap water. I find the iron in the tap water makes many of my teas taste metallic and bitter. I am also an avid bread baker, and tap water interferes with the taste and the rise of the bread (imo).
For straight teas, I prefer to use my Brita filter. For highly flavoured teas, I tend to just use tap water since the taste of the water is usually overpowered anyway.
I’m a Brita user as well. I also use bottled water from time to time, mostly when I need more than the Brita can generate quickly. According to the Brita web site, Brita filters chlorine and some elements (mercury among them) that can show up in tap water. It also partially removes some of the minerals that contribute to hard water such as calcium and magnesium, but it doesn’t remove them completely.
It’s been a long time since I started using filtered water for tea, so I really can’t remember what it was like before I started. But since I kept using it despite it introducing an intermediate step in tea making and so being somewhat less convenient, I suspect it made things noticeably better. The tap water where I live is in the mid-range of reported hardness (46 out of a range of 7-77). I only really notice that it has some hardness when I go to places like New York that has very soft water, to the point where I feel like the conditioner is still in my hair after shampooing no matter how much I rinse.
It’s so interesting that you’re asking about this. When I was in Russia, I noticed the most curious thing: when I poured very mineraly water into my black tea, it turned even darker! I have no idea what happened but it sounds like calcium and magnesium could have done it? Maybe?
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