Quick Water Comparative
Shui Jin Gui
Check this out: This is the same tea, brewed the same way (method, time, water temp ect...), but with different waters. The water on the left is New York tap water and the one on the right is my filtered tap. Not only did the teas look completely different but they behaved totally different, tasted different and the waters even looked different when they were boiling. The difference is noticeable even in the rinse. I am still working on figuring out what it is exactly that makes them so different, but I know that the New York water has something in it that is blocking out the bitters of the tea. It is certainly a water with a higher mineral content,
but what that mineral or minerals are is still to be determined. My filtered tap has a very low mineral content and they both have their pros and cons. The New York water really curbs the bitterness of the tea allowing you to bring out the flavors of certain teas without the bitterness. The filtered tap makes it easier to cup for defects, because it just lets everything out. The one thing I don't like about my water is that it can be very fussy if you want to drink something like a Phoenix Mountain oolong. The New York water seems to make even poor quality teas taste alright.
This puts an interesting spin on cupping. If two people on opposite sides of the country or even different towns for that matter cup the same tea with the same methods, and come up with different tasting notes it could easily be because of the water. I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me about how when he steeped a sencha while he was up in Vermont, the tea just didn't get results even close to when he brews it at home. This is because the water in the part of Vermont he was visiting is very hard. So hard in fact that when he boiled a pot of water, as the water evaporated, a white ring built up on the side of the pot from all the minerals in the water. I had a similar experience with teas I brought back from California the last time I went.
Now to the fun part. Here are the cupping notes I got from the two waters:
Shui Jin Gui (New York water): Sugared dates, canned pineapple with some dirtier base notes
Shui Jin Gui (filtered tap water): Prunes, Nectarines with that same dirtier base and a bit more bitterness. It should be noted that this water was super fussy. If you don't brew it just right it gets super bitter super quick.
I also cupped this tea with the barismo crew and used some really awful tap water that produced more of a lychee taste and some awful chemically notes like fluorine or chlorine or whatever it is that was in the water.
-Silas
Check this out: This is the same tea, brewed the same way (method, time, water temp ect...), but with different waters. The water on the left is New York tap water and the one on the right is my filtered tap. Not only did the teas look completely different but they behaved totally different, tasted different and the waters even looked different when they were boiling. The difference is noticeable even in the rinse. I am still working on figuring out what it is exactly that makes them so different, but I know that the New York water has something in it that is blocking out the bitters of the tea. It is certainly a water with a higher mineral content,
but what that mineral or minerals are is still to be determined. My filtered tap has a very low mineral content and they both have their pros and cons. The New York water really curbs the bitterness of the tea allowing you to bring out the flavors of certain teas without the bitterness. The filtered tap makes it easier to cup for defects, because it just lets everything out. The one thing I don't like about my water is that it can be very fussy if you want to drink something like a Phoenix Mountain oolong. The New York water seems to make even poor quality teas taste alright.
This puts an interesting spin on cupping. If two people on opposite sides of the country or even different towns for that matter cup the same tea with the same methods, and come up with different tasting notes it could easily be because of the water. I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me about how when he steeped a sencha while he was up in Vermont, the tea just didn't get results even close to when he brews it at home. This is because the water in the part of Vermont he was visiting is very hard. So hard in fact that when he boiled a pot of water, as the water evaporated, a white ring built up on the side of the pot from all the minerals in the water. I had a similar experience with teas I brought back from California the last time I went.
Now to the fun part. Here are the cupping notes I got from the two waters:
Shui Jin Gui (New York water): Sugared dates, canned pineapple with some dirtier base notes
Shui Jin Gui (filtered tap water): Prunes, Nectarines with that same dirtier base and a bit more bitterness. It should be noted that this water was super fussy. If you don't brew it just right it gets super bitter super quick.
I also cupped this tea with the barismo crew and used some really awful tap water that produced more of a lychee taste and some awful chemically notes like fluorine or chlorine or whatever it is that was in the water.
-Silas
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