TeaChat

Hi,

In my area the water is highly chlorinated, and if you make tea with this water then you can only taste this in your cup. So for years and years I have been making all of my teas with water which has basically been demineralized / dechlorinated etc. (the kind that you get in those big blue jugs that you use in a watercooler) I always figured this would be the best because it gets rid of the bad tastes in water, but I have been reading that you may need minerals in the water to get the best taste?
What do people do for water if their areas tap water is awful?

thanks!!

I'd recommend buying bottles of natural spring water to use for your tea

That will be clean and have minerals in it

I use a Brita filter, it's an activated carbon filter. I just have a pitcher from them that holds about 2 L of water. I'm not actually sure if activated carbon filters remove chlorine - you could easily check. And it's a lot more economical and environmentally friendly than buying bottled water for tea.

I personally started by using Brita filter but soon realised that it was not as good as spring water. It depends what type of tea you brew but generally green and white tea is easily affected by the water taste/quality. So I agree with entropyembrace and recomment using spring water

Move to Cleveland, Ohio. I've lived in a lot of different places, and hands down, that place has the best tap water of any place I've lived (with the exception of a few places where I was drinking well water from a tap).

I always miss the Cleveland water...

Look at this thread discussing the same subject too:

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10899

best,

...........john

Ahh!! See I've been having the opposite but same problem. I'm from Long Island NY, where the water is very hard, you can smell the chlorine on your skin after you shower! I call myself 'chemically dependent' and I loved drinking the water there! I think maybe water is something we get used to when we live in a place for a long time. Now I live in SC which has to be the softest water in america. It's such a drastic change. I can feel it even - the water feels soapy! I want to try to get used to it.

My secret: I force myself to drink a cup of it in the morning to get used to the flavor.

I have begun to use the tap for black teas and spiced teas without their flavor being affected to my taste. But for finer flavored teas, I still use bottled water T__T

Like previously mentioned Brita may help if you water has a chlorinated/flouridic/or other chemical taste. It won't chemicalize (?) my water though lol.

We have a 600ft deep well that we get our water from and it seems to be very good. We have always had city water until now and it was heavily chlorinated.

I spend a lot of time on both the East and West Coast of the US. On the East Coast I drink (and use for tea) Poland Spring for the most part, and Crystal Geyser when I'm on the West Coast. Both are good and reasonably priced buying in bulk in either location.

I love the taste of Volvic water but stopped drinking it when my husband grew concerned over news reports of arsenic levels. I also like Fiji - maybe because its cost induces me to drink it like an elixir instead of drinking only tea all day