Water question

[Noonie]

In the last few days I've used bottled/spring water and my tap water when making tea. To my palette I've not noticed a difference. We have a water softener and I drink and enjoy cold water from the tap all the time. I know all tap water is different, but if the water is soft and if I enjoy drinking it cold, is there any reason I shouldn't use it when preparing tea?

[tortoise]

I don't think there's a reason not to use tap if it tastes ok. I use tap water fairly regularly, but I can taste the difference between my tap and decent bottled water. There are some teas I will not make with the tap water because there some less favorable qualities come through. With some heavier teas, I don't notice the tap water as much.

I can taste the difference most obviously if the brewed tea has cooled down to room temperature. At that point, the gristly, metallic taste of my tap water is apparent with almost any tea.

[JRS22]

One reason other than taste is scale in your teakettle. I use filtered water and I don't have to go to any lengths to remove scale from my stainless steel kettle.

[tortoise]

One reason other than taste is scale in your teakettle. I use filtered water and I don't have to go to any lengths to remove scale from my stainless steel kettle.

That is a great reason. I have to deep clean my white tea ware more often than I'd like to and that is probably the reason why.

[wyardley]

A standard filter won't necessarily remove much scale; I have definitely had scale buildup even when using filtered water.

I do have a filter which is said to reduce scale as one of the 3 in my multistage filter setup, but I don't think they're common in filters for home use.

I would suggest at least doing some basic filtering of tap water to remove the chlorine, even if you are bringing it to a full boil.

[JRS22]

A standard filter won't necessarily remove much scale; I have definitely had scale buildup even when using filtered water.

So maybe I'm just lucky about my water quality. The filter does improve the taste.

[Chip]

A standard filter won't necessarily remove much scale; I have definitely had scale buildup even when using filtered water.

So maybe I'm just lucky about my water quality. The filter does improve the taste.

I went from having to descale my stainless steel kettle every week or two to virtually never with the graviTea filter. I used to have so much scale, I did not realize how much til it was suddenly gone.