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

The Real English Breakfast

I recently came across and interesting article in 'Tea and Coffee Trade Journal' that made me chuckle. The article was about a certain kind of British Tea, but not the typical English Breakfast.

For all you English breakfast enthusiasts out there who define English Breakfast tea by certain origin and taste standards (some people say Keemun is the only true English Breakfast) check this out: Britain now grows it’s very own tea. Not that I am a fan of the “standard” English Breakfast, but at least now the Tregothnan estate in Cornwall can say they have the only true English Breakfast tea. Apparently the climate is similar to Darjeeling, and there are 30 different cultivars grown and processed there. They plan to produce a ton of tea per year until 2010 and develop a business focused on quality and sustainability.

Interestingly enough, the tea is grown and thrives by organic standards and the area is naturally free of the insects that normally cause tea farmers to use pesticides in other parts of the world. Though free from insects, the rabbits, deer and pheasants seem to love the young tea buds as much as humans. Pheasants in particular can pick a whole bush bare. Those must be some energetic little pheasants!

Cornwall, in southwestern England, is known for its attractive botanical gardens and until 1999, The Tregothnan estate was one of these. According to the article, Jonathan Jones, now the head gardener at Tregothnan suggested the idea of growing and processing tea to be sold on the English market. After researching tea plants already growing on Britain, he set off to study tea growing in China, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, and Korea as well as some other tea growing regions around the world. On may 3rd 2005 after the tea plants had matured enough to be picked for a commercial crop the first tea was picked and processed. After the processing was finished it was shipped to London to be sold there as what is most certainly the freshest tea ever sold in England.

According to Jones (as stated in the article mentioned above), Tregothnan is going to start producing micro-lots to study which cultivars and processing techniques produce the best quality tea. Tregothnan has recently cleared some new area on steep hill sides to bring their total area of tea bushes to 30 acres.

The Tregothnan single estate tea goes for 28 British pounds for 50 grams of tea. That is about 50$ for 50 grams. That actually comes out to around the same price as the Da Yu Ling. They also offer tours around the estate for those interested in seeing the true English Breakfast growing and being processed.

Water Quality

Just as important as the quality of the tea itself is the quality of the water you use to brew a certain tea. Brewed tea is 98% water, so it makes sense that the water you use will affect the taste of the tea immensely. At this point without the disposal of a lab and scientists capable of testing water for chemical composition, I cannot tell you which minerals add or take away flavor.

Which minerals give favorable or unfavorable tastes to the tea is still a mystery to me. I know from my own basic research that the quality of the water affects everything involved with the taste of brewed tea.

For example, a tea I had brewed with water in California tasted light years better than the same tea brewed with my inferior Boston area water. Not only that, but the brew time and color of the liquor are totally different.

One thing that seems to help out a lot is using very soft water. When I say soft, I mean 20-40 parts per million mineral content. Most bottled water has a much higher mineral content. It is clear when you brew tea with water that has 200 parts per million mineral content, that there are some good and some possbily negative minerals in water. If you really pay attention and taste the water itself you can taste the sweetness, and the minerality.

I mean, how can you expect to get the same type of extraction when you have 180 more parts per million already in the water? In nutrition you learn that certain vitamins and minerals stop each other from being absorbed into the human body. Could this be true with tea? Could the vitamin and mineral content of a particular tea effect the way that tea brews with certain water?

I have found San Francisco Bay Area water and New York City water tend to work well when brewing tea. I have also found Voss and Penta bottled waters to work well. Any bottled water with a high mineral content seems to make the tea taste bitter. At home I have a filter and softening tap that brings the mineral content of my tap water down to about 20-40 parts per million. This water still does not work as well as the water I had last time I went to the Bay Area.

A couple of weeks ago, I tasted tea with Mark over at MEM Tea Imports. We brewed 3 of the same teas with 2 different waters and the color of the brewed tea was drastically different. The taste was also incredibly different. Not only did one of the waters produce a fuller, sweeter taste, but it was also more complex in flavor.

There is still a lot to be learned and experimented with involving water, but just tasting the difference between tap and different bottled waters is mind blowing.

-Silas