On Water In Tea

Water, it's more important to making a good cup of tea than the tea leaf itself.  Water makes up well over 90% of a cup of tea and choosing your source of water is just as important as choosing your source of tea.  Good water with mediocre tea leaf makes a better cup than mediocre water with good tea leaf.


Which water is best water?  The hierarchy goes as follows:
1. Spring water
2. Flowing stream water
3. Tap or bottled water
In China, some springs are held in higher esteem than others for their superior quality. 

Once you've chosen your water, what you do with it next is just as important.  Have you ever boiled more water than you need only to come back later and reboil the same water?  Tsk, tsk my friend, this is not the way.  Of course, if you're drinking a dark, black tea loaded with milk and sugar you probably won't notice the difference, but as you move on to more delicate teas, such as green, white or oolong and leave the condiments behind, your palette will get more picky about what you pass through your mouth.

Now, now, lower that skeptic's brow, I come bearing science.  While the science may not yet provide us with a complete picture it does give us a few hints.  As you know (if you didn't flunk 4th grade science) water is H2O, a compound of Hydrogen and Oxygen.  However, regardless of whether your water comes from a bottle, the tap or a mountain spring there are other things floating around in there that give it that extra umph, sometimes in good ways, some times not.  One such compound that is found in water is O2, plain old breathing Oxygen.  When water is boiled, the Oxygen evaporates and the more you boil the more you lose.  Maintaining a high level of Oxygen is one reason often cited by tea experts for why water should never be over-boiled or reboiled.

According to my father, a former physicist and fellow tea lover, there is another reason to take that kettle of the fire.  Remember snowflakes?  That's water molecules forming crystals.  As the temperature increases, the crystallized bonds shared between water molecules break up, but not entirely.  They still maintain a quasi-crystallized relationship.  All crystals have defects and these defects leave vacancies.  My father's theory is that the various compounds within tea fill these vacancies, thus resulting in a chemical composition.  If the water is over-boiled, the crystalline relationship is broken up and a chemical composition isn't formed.  Instead, you get a melange, like a salad, which is inferior in terms of flavour.


Whether this theory holds water (sorry) or not I can't say, but it does remind me of one of my favourite methods of making tea.  Ice-Melted Tea.  Put the normal amount of dry leaf in the bottom of a pot and fill the pot to the top with ice.  Allow the ice to melt (this will take over an hour at room temperature).  Once all the ice has melted, the tea is ready to drink.  I've done this with Gyokuro and found the flavour incredible, but it does take patience.

Now if you'll excuse me, all this science is making me thirsty, time to go find my old chemistry goggles...