Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

Owes its flavors to oxidation levels between green & black tea.


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Dec 17th, '12, 03:47
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by Tead Off » Dec 17th, '12, 03:47

javi_sanchez wrote:Oh thanks I can get Aquafina pretty readily around here, obviously in small bottles as well. This is fine for just experimenting. I am all out of my Floating Leaves DaYuLing but I do have some of their LiShan as wella s some from HouDe so I might just enjoy those for the rest of the month.

Does your well water go through a reverse osmosis process? Does that process add a bit of sodium to the water? Are you able to remove all the sodium afterwards? Does it affect the tea?
I would venture to say RO water is not good for tea. My first brush with this type of water was in India. I was in Darjeeling and brewing teas in my hotel room with RO water. I could hardly get a taste out of the teas with it. When I finally returned home, I marveled at the difference. Darjeeling is also 2200m elevation, but I've had to brew tea with RO water at sea level. Same bland taste.

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Dec 17th, '12, 13:18
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by ImmortaliTEA » Dec 17th, '12, 13:18

Tead Off wrote:
javi_sanchez wrote:Oh thanks I can get Aquafina pretty readily around here, obviously in small bottles as well. This is fine for just experimenting. I am all out of my Floating Leaves DaYuLing but I do have some of their LiShan as wella s some from HouDe so I might just enjoy those for the rest of the month.

Does your well water go through a reverse osmosis process? Does that process add a bit of sodium to the water? Are you able to remove all the sodium afterwards? Does it affect the tea?
I would venture to say RO water is not good for tea. My first brush with this type of water was in India. I was in Darjeeling and brewing teas in my hotel room with RO water. I could hardly get a taste out of the teas with it. When I finally returned home, I marveled at the difference. Darjeeling is also 2200m elevation, but I've had to brew tea with RO water at sea level. Same bland taste.
+1. I used to love drinking Aquafina just for my regular water before I started drinking tea heavily, so I assumed it would be great for tea as well but I personally don't like it or any other RO waters on the market (for tea at least). I don't know if I've become spoiled but I only use Zephyrhills Spring Water now and I get it delivered in 5 gallon jugs (4 a month) and feel like no waters compare to Nestlé company spring waters (besides Volvic or Icelandic Glacial) and you should be able to find a subsidiary in any state (not sure about out of country). Not sure if this makes sense but I also use Bamboo Charcoal in my kettle with that water and it thickens mouthfeel even more (even on lighter teas which is wonderful in combination with their usually wonderful aromas)!

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Dec 18th, '12, 21:26
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by javi_sanchez » Dec 18th, '12, 21:26

Have any of you guys/gals tried bamboo charcoal?

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Dec 18th, '12, 21:52
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by wyardley » Dec 18th, '12, 21:52

I hate hate hate Acquafina and similar waters, even for drinking. They taste completely hollow, and to me, somehow feel noticeably rough on the throat. Also, what's the point of paying for that in a bottle, when you can filter your own water at home? I would rather drink tap water from almost any area in the US before that stuff.

Bottled spring, with low to medium amount of TDS is the way to go IMHO. You are better off with a good charcoal filter based system (even something like Brita or Pur) before going with RO or distilled water. There are some ways to remineralize these waters, but even so....

One other problem with RO filtration is that, as I understand it, there's a certain amount of water waste involved in the process.
Last edited by wyardley on Dec 18th, '12, 22:10, edited 1 time in total.

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Dec 18th, '12, 21:58
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by Chip » Dec 18th, '12, 21:58

... heh ... I hate hate the thought of purchasing bottled water of any kind.

But really ... ? I have only just purchased my first Aquafina and similar products within the last week or so ... they taste pretty good to me.

TBH, I have only tried them for Sencha. The results were superior to my very hard well water, my water filtered, or even the few spring waters I have tried.

I am new to this water game, albeit ... ignorance used to be bliss for me, but alas ... that ship has sailed and the water journey begins. And before I go out and purchase other systems ... I will be experimenting some more.

And I will search for more spring waters with lower TDS.

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by wyardley » Dec 18th, '12, 22:06

I guess it's a personal thing, but I find Acquafina, Dasani, and similar waters to be really unpleasant to drink. It's not so much like they taste bad as that they have this soul-sucking lack of taste. But it's the feeling in my mouth that's really unpleasant, like a roughness or sharpness (and I am not usually that sensitive to those kinds of things). But also, I can see some "value" in a clean water that's from a natural source, but paying the same amount for something I could make at home with an RO setup really irks me.

I don't drink a lot of green teas, so that may have something to do with it, but I find spring water to be noticeably better than just about anything else, even though it bugs me to have to buy water in plastic containers (I try to minimize it by having large plastic jugs delivered, and then bringing the water to work in glass jugs).

I do have pretty good results with my regular filtered water at home - I use a 3 stage conventional filter from http://www.purewaterproducts.com/. I use that for drinking, cooking, and some casual tea / coffee brewing, but I do prefer bottled spring water for serious tea drinking.

Poland Springs should be available where you are, right Chip? Have you tried that one yet?

I love Volvic, but rarely buy it except when drinking the rarest and most expensive of teas, because it's expensive and transported from France. That said, I've noticed that if I have some lying around, even if I'm not thinking about it, tea I brew with it seems to taste way better.

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by Chip » Dec 18th, '12, 22:49

Poland Spring is available here. Not sure I tried that spring water recently. And don't think I ever tried it to brew tea. I will give it a go.

Volvic is a name I see thrown around here a lot, but I have never seen it ... never tasted it.

Ultimately I would like to try some kind of home system at home that yields very good results. But I do not think that is going to happen anytime soon. Like I said, I am on my first step of this journey. :)

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by ImmortaliTEA » Dec 18th, '12, 23:51

I have been pondering this lately and it seems like it would be the closest thing to natural spring water or mountain water because it is filtered through nine different earth materials such as ceramic, silica sand,carbon charcoal, and many more (Some of these re-mineralize the water as well and bring the pH up to mildly alkaline levels). Let me know what you guys think!

http://www.santevia.com/index.php?optio ... Itemid=252

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Dec 19th, '12, 01:26
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by Tead Off » Dec 19th, '12, 01:26

javi_sanchez wrote:Have any of you guys/gals tried bamboo charcoal?
I used bamboo charcoal when I used to use a Brita water filter. It helped vs Brita water without it. But, I found the Brita filter lowered the ph from 7 to 6 and this affected the taste of tea adversely. I now use an English system made by Doulton which attaches to the faucet.

The best thing for you to do is experiment over time with different waters and different teas in them. The same water will not always be good for every tea and you can see that posters won't always agree about what is best. A real mineral water will have high TDS, over 250, I believe. I found these waters were great for Japanese green teas but not as good for oolongs and puerh.

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Dec 22nd, '12, 14:26
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by javi_sanchez » Dec 22nd, '12, 14:26

I can get Poland Spring pretty easily around here. According to this site: http://www.h2ro.com/_Bottled2.htm Poland Spring is a bit acidic and has pretty low TDS. I'll try that today with some LiShan from HouDe.

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Dec 23rd, '12, 09:46
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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by gasninja » Dec 23rd, '12, 09:46

wyardley wrote:
One other problem with RO filtration is that, as I understand it, there's a certain amount of water waste involved in the process.
There is a very large amount of waste water. It varies but upto five gallons of waste water for every 1 gallon of purified water. I would hope the large systems that they use for bottled water operations are more efficient.

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by gasninja » Dec 23rd, '12, 09:53

ImmortaliTEA wrote:I have been pondering this lately and it seems like it would be the closest thing to natural spring water or mountain water because it is filtered through nine different earth materials such as ceramic, silica sand,carbon charcoal, and many more (Some of these re-mineralize the water as well and bring the pH up to mildly alkaline levels). Let me know what you guys think!

http://www.santevia.com/index.php?optio ... Itemid=252

That looks really interesting. I would love to hear about it if you try it out

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by Bubba_tea » Jan 10th, '13, 10:05

Hey all - hadn't been on for a long time... but the OP's question was good. A few years ago (guessing 3 now) the DYL from FLT was outstanding. The year after, she didn't have any (said bad crop). The two subsequent years I wasn't happy with it, so stopped ordering it. I don't know if I changed or the last couple of years have not been good for tea or more high quality tea is going to the higher income Chinese market nowadays - I have no idea for sure, but I wasn't able to get a good cha qi for a while. I'm searching as now I've burned through my last reserves and need some replenishing.

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by xmfi » Jan 11th, '13, 16:13

FWIW, I like her winter 2012 DYL. Has anyone else tried it?

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Re: Floating Leaves's Da Yu Ling

by javi_sanchez » Jan 16th, '13, 22:38

I found some Volvic water! I honestly was unable to tell the difference in taste between Volvic and Poland spring. However both of these taste a bit better than my tap but not by much.

I tried the Volvic with some of Floating Leave's LiShan and it was pretty good. There was a really nice "stickiness" to the tea that lingers in your mouth. However I made the tea without Volvic and the "stickiness" was still present. As I said prior, I think Gao Shan is a bit too subtle for my current tastes. After smelling tea being roasted in Japan I think I am still on a "roast" trip. I will give it one last try with some tea from Teahome. I've been itching to try to Yunnanese blacks and medium/higher roast oolongs.

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