I’ve been a loose leaf tea drinker for years, and hard CA water makes horrible tea. I lived in CT for 5 years and my tea was always delicious, and my tea kettle never accumulated any calcium at the bottom. I moved to CA 2 years ago and the first time I made tea it was disgusting. I don’t have a water softener so I’ve resorted to bringing home RO water from my workplace and using that for all my tea. Water quality makes a huge difference!
Costco has a reverse osmosis kit for your sink that costs I think $160-180 normally, but will go on sale occasionally for like $130-135. We got ours for the sale price, and I installed it myself in an afternoon. We got it before Jesse convinced me to send him so much of my money in exchange for his teas, originally so we could cut cost on bottled water. With the amount of gallon jugs of water that I would drink for my 6’3 athletic frame working outside here in the central Texas heat, we’re saving at least $500 a year in bottled water costs.
This is something that’s been looked into a lot in the coffee sphere as well; being that both drinks are mainly water it would stand that water quality and composition plays a huge role in flavor
The coffee world seems to be way more ahead though. Having specific water recipes or companies providing ready made mineral bags to add. The book "the physics of filter coffee" goes into some detail on water chemistry.
My first barista job we went through training on how to make craft lattes. We were taught that water was the first and most important step. You could get everything else exactly right but end up with bitter espresso if you don’t have the right quality water!
I use Third Wave Water for my coffee, mostly to protect my espresso machine from scaling (works the same way for my kettle), and the water tastes great with both my coffee and tea! I’ll never go back to tap! 1 Packet of Third Wave Water (or water mineral packet of any reputable brand) + 1 Gallon of distilled water
Note that he specifically referenced that he preferred longjing, which is a bright green tea. RO and water with low TDS would make sense for that situation, didn't run out to get an RO machine if your daily teas have more body. RO and distilled isn't categorically best for all teas. There's a reason why water filtered through limestone aquifers are considered best for things like whiskey, which means it's going to have minerals that would be lost in RO. Source: worked for several years in a water quality lab with access to lab quality filtration and distillation. Those waters don't taste the best. Pick a water you like the taste of and then do a personal test brew. 🍵
Yes, this is correct, I don’t think the RO water would have anywhere near as big of an effect on a darker tea. I have another video i shot where I performed the same experiment that Thomas talks about here, I’m editing it now, but the effects on green tea is pretty significant
Even with my greens, I've been enjoying my aquafer water at home. It's mineral rich, but seems to make tea just right for me. This made me think hard water is almost always the best for tea. Granted, I live way out in the boons and we have no tea culture here.
This is true, but if the chemicals in the water make the water unsafe long term, it’s still not worth the “flavor”. Honestly it’s best to purify it with RO so it’s trustworthy and healthful, and then remineralize.
We have a couple of guys at work who are really into coffee. They are doing this same thing trying to perfect the water they’re using. They usually buy distilled water and experiment with adding different minerals to enhance all the right taste notes of the different types of coffee. I have always written them off, but it actually makes a lot of sense since 99% of the drink (coffee or tea) is actually just water
Costco has a reverse osmosis kit for your sink that costs I think $160-180 normally, but will go on sale occasionally for like $130-135. We got ours for the sale price, and I installed it myself in an afternoon. We got it before Jesse convinced me to send him so much of my money in exchange for his teas, originally so we could cut cost on bottled water. With the amount of gallon jugs of water that I would drink for my 6’3 athletic frame working outside here in the central Texas heat, we’re saving at least $500 a year in bottled water costs.
@@internet_internet I thought that kind of machine wouldve been WAY more expensive actually. Like i was thinking 1000 bucks or smth. I might look into that at some point.
I live in Pittsburgh. Our water is not great. For awhile it was full of more lead than Flint Michigan’s water but our local government actually did something about it. Before moving to the city, I used to live in a more rural area in an old house that still used well water with plenty of natural calcium and no chlorine or fluoride or impurities from old city pipes. My tea always tastes better when I get to visit my mum in my childhood home for the holidays
For oolongs especially Dan Cong oolongs I find mineral water to work best. RO and especially distilled water makes for hella flat tea. Might just be a personal preference but it works for me and even for non tea people who I’ve had Gong Fu seshs with.
#1 thing you should know about tea. Especially delicate teas, is the water. I use RO filtered water, and everything even pu-erh tastes SO much better. I used Britta water, and you can tell the difference immediately
very glad you made a point to say that the flowing river water can still kill you, sometimes cadavers end up in streams and people wrongly assume that because water is moving, its safe to drink.
I live somewhere with pretty good tap water, but I do mess with it a bit. I put it through a brita filter and then let it sit with bamboo charcoal overnight. Works great
Coffee crowd was actually obsessing over mineral content in water for years now. But what they found is that RO/Distilled water coffee tastes a bit more dull, as some minerals are important for extraction of certain flavor compounds. So they sell mineral packs you are supposed to dissolve into a gallon of distilled water, so your mineral content is roughly in the best zone and it can be reproduced. I haven't used them yet, but I personally made the best coffee when using low-mineral mineral water, didn't test the tea yet. So maybe idea for next round of experiments? :D
RO machines are more versatile than youd think, it can replace distilled water in any application. I often use it to mix coolant for my truck and for plants, as well as to calibrate equipment
In Indiana, where I live, not only is it extremely hard water, but the iron and sulfur makes it impossible to just use well water for tea. Even Lu Yu knew well water isn’t best! However, with the rise of chemicals etc like PFAS, I chose to have an RO installed, and not only is it pure and safe water, it makes tea taste the best it can! The difference is actually jaw dropping. When your TDS is 500-900 ppm, an RO can reduce it down to 50 or less, that’s absolutely noticeable.
Very new to tea, I really like the look of kyusu, can I use every kind of tea with it, like black, green, puer, japanese, and chinese? If not whats’s a good recommendation that looks similar? Thanks!
interesting contemplation points. Would be better testing if different tap water from different regions were tested and compared. Also, there are different filtration methods beyond distilled or reverse osmosis. Would be good to compare those as well. Thanks.
As a dedicated tea enthusiast my experiments have not led to the same conclusion. I find that low tds(total dissolved solid) water is superior to totally distilled. Distilled is better than a water of 200+ tds without question(most tap water), but 50 tds is better that totally distilled imo. Do your own test people!! :)
I asked on a short you made, what about spring water or even from the locations the tea is grown in? I'm betting mineral content from regional sources can effect flavor.
Generally be it coffee or tea i really stick by the concept of if youre bevarage consists of 99% make sure you like basic flavor of that water as is. I live in south florida and univerally the tap tastes like sulpher and clorine. So in FL i would never use tap. When im back in the North East however, i am perfectly happy drinking gallons from the tap so i use it to steep with
Would be interesting to see if store bought spring water would also make a difference. But I guess in most western countries, it's not actually superior to tap water I guess, since it's also super varied in mineral contents. And what I got from your experience is that you don't want many minerals and trace elements in your water.
I find RO and distilled water makes for dull and muted tea. The water needs some mineral content to bind the flavor compounds and contribute some complexity and texture. Water that’s too hard or full of the wrong minerals, eg. too much sulfur or calcium is no good either and it’s tough to find the right balance. If you’re not lucky enough to have access to Lu Yu’s mountain stream, bottled spring water is ideal and tap water is a very acceptable second choice, depending on the region. Good water can’t fix bad tea, but bad water can absolutely ruin a good tea.
Coffee nerds actually sell mineral packs you are supposed to dissolve into a gallon of distilled water to make the mineral content *just right*/measured and reproducible for coffee extraction. I personally had the best experience making coffee with low-mineral mineral water. Still some minerals, but definitely not as hard and full of calcium as my tap water is.
I use RO water and everyone keeps telling me the ph is wrong and the lack of minerals: those two things make my tea flat and mess with the flavor and aroma but I'm like I don't want microplastics :(
There seems to be differing opinions on the tap water in China, that it is safe at the point of production but may get contaminated with heavy metals during transport in the aging pipe network. Given that boiling heavy metal contaminated water is not going to address any safety concerns, have you done any testing to look into this? Would be great to hear your thoughts on water quality and home treatment options in China given the importance in making good tea "Fan Kangping, director of the water quality center of Beijing Waterworks Group, said the city's water had been potable since 2003. ... "We have a dilemma. The water piped out is clean and safe but gets contaminated before it reaches users," Fan said."
Hey Jesse, I love your content. I just wanted to give you a heads up and let you know that the audio on this video was very low quality and weirdly odd. Something was off. Not 💯 sure. Just trying to bring it to your attention. Not trying to be negative.
Yes, it’s an echoing effect based off of the fact that, since we face each other when we speak, we accidentally speak into each other’s mikes, and it creates a echo. We’re working on a way to fix it, for the podcast in general.
Prefer the use of the same water that i use for coffee, pure water that i reminalize. Some minerals actually made the tea sweeter. Magnesium filter are the best because they convert calcium an wont ever scale your kettle.
Dude, the specialty coffee industry has been doing this for over a decade. There are even mineral packs you can buy to add to distilled water to ensue your water has the right amount of "leeching" capacity every brew
Always using reverse osmosis, the purity of the water is key, ppm being close to 0 is best. I always use pure water in my electric kettle so calcium buildup doesn’t happen I want to try the mineral packets the coffee world has, to test, love my reverse osmosis tho.
Not a tea person, just starting to dabble, but I caution about purified water. Because it lacks in the mineral department it will pull from your body to equalize. As a person who deals with mineral issues, trust me. Purified water for machines, drinking water for humans.
I can confirm this. I have been using RO water to drink. cook. make tea for years now... no matter how safe you think your tap water is... at some point the system will fail... and you may never know... much better to RO all the water you use.. especially for drinking and cooking. also if you have plants they will love you for using RO...
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I’ve been a loose leaf tea drinker for years, and hard CA water makes horrible tea. I lived in CT for 5 years and my tea was always delicious, and my tea kettle never accumulated any calcium at the bottom. I moved to CA 2 years ago and the first time I made tea it was disgusting. I don’t have a water softener so I’ve resorted to bringing home RO water from my workplace and using that for all my tea. Water quality makes a huge difference!
Costco has a reverse osmosis kit for your sink that costs I think $160-180 normally, but will go on sale occasionally for like $130-135.
We got ours for the sale price, and I installed it myself in an afternoon.
We got it before Jesse convinced me to send him so much of my money in exchange for his teas, originally so we could cut cost on bottled water.
With the amount of gallon jugs of water that I would drink for my 6’3 athletic frame working outside here in the central Texas heat, we’re saving at least $500 a year in bottled water costs.
This is something that’s been looked into a lot in the coffee sphere as well; being that both drinks are mainly water it would stand that water quality and composition plays a huge role in flavor
Perhaps due to its simplicity, that's why it flies over our heads. At least, that's the reason I hope for 😅
The coffee world seems to be way more ahead though. Having specific water recipes or companies providing ready made mineral bags to add. The book "the physics of filter coffee" goes into some detail on water chemistry.
Beer brewing as well
My first barista job we went through training on how to make craft lattes. We were taught that water was the first and most important step. You could get everything else exactly right but end up with bitter espresso if you don’t have the right quality water!
I use Third Wave Water for my coffee, mostly to protect my espresso machine from scaling (works the same way for my kettle), and the water tastes great with both my coffee and tea! I’ll never go back to tap!
1 Packet of Third Wave Water (or water mineral packet of any reputable brand) + 1 Gallon of distilled water
Note that he specifically referenced that he preferred longjing, which is a bright green tea. RO and water with low TDS would make sense for that situation, didn't run out to get an RO machine if your daily teas have more body. RO and distilled isn't categorically best for all teas. There's a reason why water filtered through limestone aquifers are considered best for things like whiskey, which means it's going to have minerals that would be lost in RO. Source: worked for several years in a water quality lab with access to lab quality filtration and distillation. Those waters don't taste the best. Pick a water you like the taste of and then do a personal test brew. 🍵
Yes, this is correct, I don’t think the RO water would have anywhere near as big of an effect on a darker tea. I have another video i shot where I performed the same experiment that Thomas talks about here, I’m editing it now, but the effects on green tea is pretty significant
Even with my greens, I've been enjoying my aquafer water at home. It's mineral rich, but seems to make tea just right for me.
This made me think hard water is almost always the best for tea.
Granted, I live way out in the boons and we have no tea culture here.
This is true, but if the chemicals in the water make the water unsafe long term, it’s still not worth the “flavor”. Honestly it’s best to purify it with RO so it’s trustworthy and healthful, and then remineralize.
We have a couple of guys at work who are really into coffee. They are doing this same thing trying to perfect the water they’re using. They usually buy distilled water and experiment with adding different minerals to enhance all the right taste notes of the different types of coffee. I have always written them off, but it actually makes a lot of sense since 99% of the drink (coffee or tea) is actually just water
Really appreciate the one guy who has the patience and really spent the efforts to test the water out for the rest of us…
Now everyone is going to try and calculate how much of a step it is in cost it to go from filtered to RO.
Costco has a reverse osmosis kit for your sink that costs I think $160-180 normally, but will go on sale occasionally for like $130-135.
We got ours for the sale price, and I installed it myself in an afternoon.
We got it before Jesse convinced me to send him so much of my money in exchange for his teas, originally so we could cut cost on bottled water.
With the amount of gallon jugs of water that I would drink for my 6’3 athletic frame working outside here in the central Texas heat, we’re saving at least $500 a year in bottled water costs.
@@internet_internet I thought that kind of machine wouldve been WAY more expensive actually. Like i was thinking 1000 bucks or smth. I might look into that at some point.
I live in Pittsburgh. Our water is not great. For awhile it was full of more lead than Flint Michigan’s water but our local government actually did something about it. Before moving to the city, I used to live in a more rural area in an old house that still used well water with plenty of natural calcium and no chlorine or fluoride or impurities from old city pipes. My tea always tastes better when I get to visit my mum in my childhood home for the holidays
RO user from the Chicago area, and completely agree, best for tea!
For oolongs especially Dan Cong oolongs I find mineral water to work best. RO and especially distilled water makes for hella flat tea. Might just be a personal preference but it works for me and even for non tea people who I’ve had Gong Fu seshs with.
#1 thing you should know about tea. Especially delicate teas, is the water. I use RO filtered water, and everything even pu-erh tastes SO much better. I used Britta water, and you can tell the difference immediately
Thank you for this information😊
very glad you made a point to say that the flowing river water can still kill you, sometimes cadavers end up in streams and people wrongly assume that because water is moving, its safe to drink.
I live somewhere with pretty good tap water, but I do mess with it a bit. I put it through a brita filter and then let it sit with bamboo charcoal overnight. Works great
Spring water makes the best tea
agreed
Coffee crowd was actually obsessing over mineral content in water for years now. But what they found is that RO/Distilled water coffee tastes a bit more dull, as some minerals are important for extraction of certain flavor compounds. So they sell mineral packs you are supposed to dissolve into a gallon of distilled water, so your mineral content is roughly in the best zone and it can be reproduced. I haven't used them yet, but I personally made the best coffee when using low-mineral mineral water, didn't test the tea yet. So maybe idea for next round of experiments? :D
How much tea do you usually drink in a day Jesse? You've got me obsessed with it now 😂
RO machines are more versatile than youd think, it can replace distilled water in any application. I often use it to mix coolant for my truck and for plants, as well as to calibrate equipment
Im from flint, Michigan. I just use the tap water. Adds a nice metallic twang
In Indiana, where I live, not only is it extremely hard water, but the iron and sulfur makes it impossible to just use well water for tea. Even Lu Yu knew well water isn’t best! However, with the rise of chemicals etc like PFAS, I chose to have an RO installed, and not only is it pure and safe water, it makes tea taste the best it can! The difference is actually jaw dropping. When your TDS is 500-900 ppm, an RO can reduce it down to 50 or less, that’s absolutely noticeable.
I feel like a cooperation with James Hoffmann on this topic would be great. He likes good tea too and he has the equipment.
Very new to tea, I really like the look of kyusu, can I use every kind of tea with it, like black, green, puer, japanese, and chinese? If not whats’s a good recommendation that looks similar? Thanks!
This could be a good video :)
interesting contemplation points. Would be better testing if different tap water from different regions were tested and compared. Also, there are different filtration methods beyond distilled or reverse osmosis. Would be good to compare those as well. Thanks.
As a dedicated tea enthusiast my experiments have not led to the same conclusion. I find that low tds(total dissolved solid) water is superior to totally distilled. Distilled is better than a water of 200+ tds without question(most tap water), but 50 tds is better that totally distilled imo. Do your own test people!! :)
I live in an area where we have an aquifer below us, and it's pretty deep as well, I wonder how my tap water compares to other waters...
I asked on a short you made, what about spring water or even from the locations the tea is grown in? I'm betting mineral content from regional sources can effect flavor.
Wish the audio wasn’t so bad, but I love your stuff so much
We are working on it 😂 trying to find some solution to the echo problem that comes from talk bleeding into the other persons mic 😂
@@jessesteahouse It's more then sufficient, though. As a non-native speaker I could understand everything perfectly. No need to panic :D
The audio is fine stop being a baby
@@JohnSmith-j2jno it just sounds weird
😂😂
Fuck yeah, tea science!
it’s the same with coffee to the point where company now sell pack of salt for distilled water for coffee
Please make a video of doing the test!!!
Generally be it coffee or tea i really stick by the concept of if youre bevarage consists of 99% make sure you like basic flavor of that water as is. I live in south florida and univerally the tap tastes like sulpher and clorine. So in FL i would never use tap. When im back in the North East however, i am perfectly happy drinking gallons from the tap so i use it to steep with
Would be interesting to see if store bought spring water would also make a difference. But I guess in most western countries, it's not actually superior to tap water I guess, since it's also super varied in mineral contents. And what I got from your experience is that you don't want many minerals and trace elements in your water.
If no RO, distilled is a good choice?
Do you have any current discount codes on offer for any purchases using your site? :)
If you go to the website, there is a pop-up to give you 10% off your first order 🎉
I’m really curious what the science behind this is. It’s very fascinating.
Other than the oxidation
BWT bestmax premium filters add back in magnesium which can help with taste on darker teas
I find RO and distilled water makes for dull and muted tea. The water needs some mineral content to bind the flavor compounds and contribute some complexity and texture. Water that’s too hard or full of the wrong minerals, eg. too much sulfur or calcium is no good either and it’s tough to find the right balance. If you’re not lucky enough to have access to Lu Yu’s mountain stream, bottled spring water is ideal and tap water is a very acceptable second choice, depending on the region. Good water can’t fix bad tea, but bad water can absolutely ruin a good tea.
Coffee nerds actually sell mineral packs you are supposed to dissolve into a gallon of distilled water to make the mineral content *just right*/measured and reproducible for coffee extraction. I personally had the best experience making coffee with low-mineral mineral water. Still some minerals, but definitely not as hard and full of calcium as my tap water is.
I use RO water and everyone keeps telling me the ph is wrong and the lack of minerals: those two things make my tea flat and mess with the flavor and aroma but I'm like I don't want microplastics :(
There seems to be differing opinions on the tap water in China, that it is safe at the point of production but may get contaminated with heavy metals during transport in the aging pipe network. Given that boiling heavy metal contaminated water is not going to address any safety concerns, have you done any testing to look into this? Would be great to hear your thoughts on water quality and home treatment options in China given the importance in making good tea
"Fan Kangping, director of the water quality center of Beijing Waterworks Group, said the city's water had been potable since 2003. ... "We have a dilemma. The water piped out is clean and safe but gets contaminated before it reaches users," Fan said."
Hey Jesse, I love your content. I just wanted to give you a heads up and let you know that the audio on this video was very low quality and weirdly odd. Something was off. Not 💯 sure. Just trying to bring it to your attention. Not trying to be negative.
Yes, it’s an echoing effect based off of the fact that, since we face each other when we speak, we accidentally speak into each other’s mikes, and it creates a echo. We’re working on a way to fix it, for the podcast in general.
love your videos but whats wrong with the microphone (sound is terrible) ?
Prefer the use of the same water that i use for coffee, pure water that i reminalize. Some minerals actually made the tea sweeter. Magnesium filter are the best because they convert calcium an wont ever scale your kettle.
Dude, the specialty coffee industry has been doing this for over a decade. There are even mineral packs you can buy to add to distilled water to ensue your water has the right amount of "leeching" capacity every brew
Lets get Jesse to the Himalaysas people!
Always using reverse osmosis, the purity of the water is key, ppm being close to 0 is best.
I always use pure water in my electric kettle so calcium buildup doesn’t happen
I want to try the mineral packets the coffee world has, to test, love my reverse osmosis tho.
Best water for tea is bamboo water. Water that is collected by bamboo piping
The water from the middle of the lake
The water you have at the moment
How did you learn Chinese
the audio on this one is all jacked up and echoey, great content though!
We are working on the audio 😂 it is a bit janky thanks for listening anyways
Ahh I wondered. I’ve got an ear infection right now so I was wondering if it was me!
I'm not experiencing echoing for me it's probably your phone sorry to say or your connection
@@eternalanubis4205 Uhh, considering that the author confirmed the issue, I'm betting it was fixed before you got here 🤣
Distilled and RO is not the same thing. I think you mean purified water?
tldr
tap water: tea
filtered water: Tea ™
ro: Tea+
distilled water: 𝓽 𝓮 𝓪
The tea people now started to sounds like the coffee people
Dasani 🤣
Have you tried with mineral water?
Doubled audio
The stereo sound recording is out of phase, go mono.
Mineral/spring water is the best, Britta is a waste of time you can taste it.
Not a tea person, just starting to dabble, but I caution about purified water. Because it lacks in the mineral department it will pull from your body to equalize. As a person who deals with mineral issues, trust me. Purified water for machines, drinking water for humans.
The audio is really bad.
I can confirm this. I have been using RO water to drink. cook. make tea for years now... no matter how safe you think your tap water is... at some point the system will fail... and you may never know... much better to RO all the water you use.. especially for drinking and cooking. also if you have plants they will love you for using RO...