Hey guys, welcome back to our channel. It’s Zhen here today talking about water and tea
brewing! If you are new to our channel, we share videos about Chinese tea and its culture,
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We have a saying in Chinese that water is the mother of tea. It emphasizes the importance
of water to tea. Indeed, in different phases of tea, from growing, processing, and brewing,
water plays a vital role in tea quality. This means water and tea is a big topic that we
could spend hours and hours talking about, and this video won’t be able to cover it
all. However, we are going to talk about 2 topics in detail that are most relevant to
us tea drinkers. The first topic is the one that is the most asked by many people, “what
water should I use to brew tea”? The second one is an important factor in tea brewing
that is often overlooked by many tea lovers and I will explain why I said long, thin spout
kettles are not good for gongfu tea in previous videos. So without further adieu, let’s
get started!
What water should I use to brew tea? E…. basically any water that is safe to
drink. Haha! I know some people take tea as a ritual, special moment that the water has
to be just right, the brewing vessel has to be just right. But to me drinking tea is just
drinking tea, it can be something special, a ceremony or a zen moment of my life, but
it doesn’t have to be. Many times, I drink tea simply because I’m thirsty. So I brew
teas in mugs, thermoses, or even bowls if I have too, with tap water, or even hot water
from a coffee machine. If I have to choose between being thirsty, drinking awful water,
or drinking tea brewed with awful water, I’ll always choose the latter. At least the tea
flavoured water kind of buries the taste of pure awful water. So please don’t feel like
you have to get everything right, before you can start to enjoy tea. Improvising based
on the limited resources we have is not wrong, it’s skillful!
However, we are tea connoisseurs, we have to make things complicated, n'est ce pas?
Here is the advanced approach to water. The first person brought tea tasting to the next
level, Lu Yu, has clearly stated his preferences in water for tea brewing. “山水上，江水中，井水下”
meaning the spring water from the mountains is the best, water from the rivers is mediocre,
water from the wells is least desired. That’s Lu Yu’s thoughts on what water is best for
tea brewing from 1200 years ago. Since then, there are many other tea masters throughout
Chinese history who shared with us their thoughts on water for tea. To summarize, there are
5 keywords, 清, 活, 轻, 甘, 冽. Qing, is the basic requirement for drinking water,
clear, clean, not cloudy, no impurities. Huo, refers to flowing water, flowing water
tend to be cleaner than still water because it has its own cycling eco system. And the
movement also gives the water more gas like oxygen, carbon dioxide and whatnot, which
helps the brewed tea taste more brisk and refreshing.
Qin mean light, the lighter the water, the better. This refers to the mineral content
in the water. Too much minerals in the water will affect the taste of the tea greatly as
the chemical reactions between the tea and water happens when we brew tea, for example
too much iron, the liquor color of the tea becomes darker, and the taste of the tea becomes
dull, too much calcium will make the tea taste more astringent.
Gan, sweet, means that the ideal water for brewing tea has a touch of sweetness. This
is especially noticeable among spring waters as the water flows through the earth surface,
“charged” of different minerals, micronutrients and more.
Lastly, lie means cold. It’s not literally talking about water temperature, but the character
or property. Thinking about eating a piece of pizza or some salad, if both are room temperature,
salad still gives us a refreshing, cooling feeling. So this kind of cold property in
water often refers to some deep underground water, or iceberg water vs river water. So
these five aspects work together to guide you when choosing a great water for you tea
brewing.
Though we learned a lot about the criteria for choosing water, it still doesn’t feel
very satisfying. Now let’s look at all the water we have access to. First of all, tap
water, the most accessible water and of course a good option for brewing tea. Most tap water
has chlorine added for water safety, and it’s often noticeable when drinking or brewing
with it. A great way to help reduce the flavour is to let the water sit for a while before
brewing, or when you are boiling the water, let it boil for an extra 30 second to 1 minute
after full boil so that the steam can carry away some impurities. Another option is to
use a filter, which is what we do. We use brita filtered tap water most of the time,
for creating tasting notes for the website, shooting videos for our channel and more.
Using a filter significantly reduces the materials in the water, which means almost no skunk
in the kettle and brewing vessels making the cleaning job much easier. It fits our busy
schedule of numerous tea tasting. On the other hand, it’s not yet distill level, so there’s
still some materials there to interact with tea making it a bit richer taste than distilled
water brewed tea.
There are many other options if we look at the shelves in the grocery store. In general
there are 4 types in our local grocery store: distill water, purified water, iceberg water,
and spring water. The “purest” water is distilled water. Though it’s not the best
water for brewing tea in terms of taste, it’s a great utility water in my mind. It’s a
kind of water that we use for most festivals, events and seminars, because it minimizes
the water’s effect on the tea, either positive or negative and it doesn’t stain the brewing
vessels. When switching the teas, we simply rinse the brewing vessels with boiling water
and it’s ready for the next tea. It’s fast and efficient when you have to brew many
teas in a limited time frame. Purified water seems to be less popular where I live, but
in China it’s actually quite common. In broad definition, tap water is also a kind
of purified water, but when it’s bottled for sale, it’s usually the “next level”
of purification. Icerberg and spring water are both natural waters as the name shows.
I think purified water, icerberg water and spring water are all great choices for brewing
tea, especially high grade teas.
Different water affects the tea’s liquor appearance, aroma as well as taste. But how
water content affects the taste of tea is complex and nuanced. But here are some simple
takeaways that you can use in your everyday
tea brewing.
The reason why the commonly loved spring water can be so up and down on the list is because
it sometimes has quite a high mineral content, which significantly mutes the aroma and dulls
the taste of some teas. Evian and Eska are safe brands to try in my experience.
Variations However, if we take an even closer look at
water, you’ll notice that there are still many differences in the different types of
water we just talked about. For example, tap water standards vary in different areas and
the source of the tap water also affects how it tastes and affects the tea. Filters, though
I use brita, there are many other brands out there that have different filtering abilities.
And even brita has different makes, I've heard some people say that they prefer the german
made brita. But I've never come across a German made brita, so I don’t know how different
it is. Natural water can also be very different, because of the source difference. And depending
on the source, natural water itself can be different from season to season. We have town
called wakefield which is very close to Ottawa. It has great spring water and free access
for everybody. We often go there to get water for drinking and cooking. But I notice that
during winter, the water becomes a bit too mineralized and I actually stop making tea
with it. Or I have to mix in some other water to make my own concoction of water to brew
tea. Industrial production spring water usually won't have this problem. But I did get a “bad”
water once that it’s too “nutritious” to brew tea with. I can taste the water when
drinking the tea.
All in all, I think water and tea brewing is a very fun topic that we can play with
and experiment with. It is not about right or wrong. So please share with us what’s
your water preference, any good water that you think we should try? Leave a comment below,
I’d love to know.
In the video of how to choose a kettle for gongfu brewing, I pointed out that many commonly
recognised pro tea kettles are not ideal for gongfu tea brewing because of the gooseneck
design. The reason is that the length and the thickness of the gooseneck spout leaves
us little room for control. When you go to China, do you see anybody uses a gooseneck
kettle for brewing tea? Drinking tea for thousands of years, and having dedicated books on nuances
of tea, tea vessels, what water to use, how to boil waters, but never thought of gooseneck
shape spout for the kettles is better for brewing tea? I think this difference reveals
an overlooked topic of tea brewing in the west: how to pour the water from the kettle
to the leaves?
With regular kettle, when it comes to pouring water into the brewing vessel we can control
2 things, height and water flow. Height refers to where do I hold the kettle to pour the
water, 10 cm above the gaiwan or 30 cm above. Water flow talks about a full flow from the
spout or little controlled stream out of the spout. Why do these matter? Because fundamentally
height and water flow affects water temperature and water force. Water temperature is easy
to understand, as soon as water leaves the heat source, it is cooling. The speed of cooling
can be adjusted when pouring the water. The higher the kettle, the skinnier the water
flow, the faster the cooling, the lower the temperature when it hits the tea. Just a rough
example, if the tea requires 95ºC water to brew, you can hold the kettle higher to pour,
or pour the water slower; if it’s 90ºC, pour the water high and slow. Water force
is an advanced technique we use in tea brewing to improve the “quality” of the tea, it
enhances the aroma of the tea. For example, if you have a green tea that seems not very
aromatic when brewed, try to pour the water from higher above with thicker water flow.
Then you’ll notice the tea smells much better. This is using water force to encourage the
aromatic molecules to travel faster to the top so that we can smell it easier. When you
watch oolong gongfu tea ceremony, the performance style, there are three ups and downs when
pouring the water. Besides the beautiful flow of movements, it also has the consideration
of provoking the aroma.
Now let’s look at the gooseneck. It’s long and skinny. Even when the water is at
a full boil, and we hold it close to the leaves, by the time the water comes out, it already
lose more heat than regular kettle. And its skinny spout means it’s slow to fill up
the brewing vessel, another heat loss, not to mention the slow pouring time also affects
the real brewing time. This is totally fine for most people for everyday tea. But when
do we usually want to have a proper gongfu session? Oolong tea, especially high end oolong
tea, dark tea like pu’er, high-end tea like Jin Jun Mei. and all of these ask for boiling
water. It is just something a gooseneck kettle can’t give. And of course, these teas won’t
be wrecked by the lower water temperature. But you are also definitely not getting all
the goodness that you paid extra for. The mouthfeel, the nuances are lost when brewed
with low temperature. So if you are a regular Chinese gongfu tea drinker looking for a new
kettle, stay away from the trendy gooseneck.
So the reason I didn’t want to talk much about steeping time or whatnot is because
it’s quite complicated with so many other factors that affect it. We have some videos
that talked about brewing time, and we will continue to expand on this topic so that no
matter what tea you have on hand, you’ll know how long to steep it. So don’t forget
to subscribe for more tea videos, and if this video is helpful for you, please give us a
thumbs up. And be sure to share with us and fellow tea drinkers you water preferences
or tips!
Until next time, keep steeping!