water, what tea is made of

Suggestions for brewing will always vary from tea drinker to tea drinker and rightly so because in the end, it is and always will be a matter of taste. Perhaps this is less true for Chinese teas, particularly the Oolongs, where terms like technique are probably more readily accepted. I must admit that Chinese teas, except for the major blacks, are an area where my experience is at best marginal. The variety and complexity of Chinese teas seems too insurmountable to approach and for now, my home is in the India blacks teas.
Yet, this should not mean that technique cannot be applied to brewing tea in general. I believe that it takes a certain skill to be able to bring out the most in any tea - something that I am still in the process of acquiring and tuning. However, there are aspects of the steeping process that are easily controllable and one of these is the water.

Water Choice

In an office environment, tea drinkers are really limited to only a few sources of water for their tea:

• bottled water
• filtered water
• tap water

Of these three sources, tap water is the most readily available and most convenient to use. However, some tea drinkers complain that it is not suitable for high quality tea due to the level of chlorine and other additives. This is, sadly, true and a quick taste test of tap water in the NYC area will reveal that it has a slightly metallic taste and is a little sweet (which may be because of lead?) as compared to filtered water. If this bothers you, then you should purchase a Brita or PUR filter for your desk area so that you can filter the water before it is brewed. Having a filter is especially important on those days that chlorine levels in water are abnormally high. I know when this is the case because I can smell it just by turning on a faucet or by being near any source of running tap water. (unfortunately for me, I work with a lot of documents - read paper - and having a PUR pitcher filled at all times in my desk area is not advisable)
Some tea aficionados insist that you must use bottled spring water to brew your tea. Nonsense. True, spring water in some cases will make better tea due to better mineral content (FIJI I am looking at you) but I don't think it is worth the cost out of your pocket or the cost to the environment to purchase bottled water for the purpose of brewing tea. Also I don't think the difference is great enough between bottled water and activated carbon filtered-water to merit that choice.



Water Preparation

Some of you might scoff at my use of an electric kettle to boil water in the office. Let me just tell you, that convenience and price trumps all other factors considering that I have few choices at work. Sure, I would prefer to wait for the tell-tale whistle of a Chantal kettle but I really don't have that capability in the office. As for letting water boil ... don't. Do not over boil the water. Ever. The Proctor Silex is good for this purpose as it will stop a couple of seconds after the boiling point is reached. Some will even suggest that you prevent the water from boiling at all. Not letting the water boil is admirable, though not practical in most non-home situations - too much maintenance. If you are at home, you may (if you have the cash) want to try the use of different metals/materials to heat your water. From what I have read, it seems that silver is the best. Finally, I have mentioned before the dangers of trusting an automated hot water dispenser system. My best suggestion in those cases is to test the water yourself for flatness, taste, and temperature. Different systems probably work differently to deliver hot water and I cannot in any way predict the taste of your particular water dispenser.

Questions? leave comments.