TeaChat

I use straight tap water for my tea, I know others may have different preference. Do you agree with the test? I hope we can all agree that water quality does effect tea taste.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/06/best ... ?ref=title

I'm quite happily using water from our well(pH 7.6, hardness 74ppm, sodium 18.4mg/L, no appreciable sulfate, iron, or manganese) and brewing mostly japanese greens.

I certainly believe that the water used has an effect on the results when brewing tea, however like several commenters over there I find their "test" to be of very little value as "tap", "bottled", and "filtered" each represent thousands of different waters and they've used 4. Then there is the question of how a specific tea interacts with a specific water using a specific brewing method. For instance their tap water scored poorly with their black and had top marks with their oolong, either they've shown it's impossible to say "use <whatever> type of water when making tea" or they've shown their test has noise in it and isn't saying a damn thing.

Beyond the limited value of their test, bottled water is an ecological disaster and not a great economic choice if you're going to consume a significant quantity of it daily so there's no way no how I'd be using bottles of water for my daily tea. If I'm ever faced with tap water that's vile I'm sure something could be made to work with filters even if they claim their specific combo of their tap water and their one filter didn't work out for them.

I also just noticed that right below this thread is an older one about water http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=19701
and another
http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=19174
that one also has links to a couple of other threads on the topic

Interesting, you actually know your water composition levels. Maybe I should get mine tested.

In my case it's just a side effect of having well water and wanting to ensure it is potable. The numbers are neat to know but I have no real clue how things such as pH and hardness influence the tea in the end. In my opinion while it would have required more work that would have made a much more interesting article over on SE, having more types of water and going beyond just saying 'we like this one' to look at what factors in the water correlate to differences in the brewed tea.

We have a 3-way filter on our tap at home and I use that for all my tea making needs. I have used bottled on occasion but I can't say it helped much!

I would be interested in having the water tested, and maybe comparing it to the composition of some bottled water brands, and then performing a taste test on all 5 major tea types!

I use tap water to make my tea at home (North Carolina) because our water is actually fairly good. But when I'm visiting my family in Florida, using bottled water is a must! The tap water there is iffy at best, and even with the filtration system on the kitchen sink I don't like how the water tastes. I don't like to drink it straight, it it definitely ruins tea.

mcrdotcom wrote:We have a 3-way filter on our tap at home and I use that for all my tea making needs. I have used bottled on occasion but I can't say it helped much!

I would be interested in having the water tested, and maybe comparing it to the composition of some bottled water brands, and then performing a taste test on all 5 major tea types!

That is a great idea. I assume the data and information for bottle water is available. You would just have to test your home water.

I use tap water, but I know our water is very low in magnesium--Hong Kong tap water is very soft!

This topic made me appreciate my locale even more, in the Netherlands, the water from tap is as clean as bottled water.