It’s the water, right?

No, but I’ve had “bakeoff” experiences in which NYC tap brewed tea noticeably inferior to certain mineral waters.

/Lew

Burton's Water Salts is gypsum, epsom salts, and I think potassium chloride. It's a good first step toward making a pure water into a soft mineral water, and it's certainly inexpensive enough to try.

I think the things you care about are sodium, potassium, iron, magnesium, and calcium; if you get those more or less in the right ratios you should be happy.

--scott

Hmm. It’s actually pretty hard to get the numbers on Burton. But for New York City vs. Volvic, if all 5 of your ions are really important, it looks kind of bleak. Note the iron surplus NYC has:

NYC Volvic sodium 9 9.4 potassium 0.5 5.7 iron 40

That's because everyone has their own particular ratio of the three ingredients. But it's basically adding calcium, potassium, and magnesium.

And my guess is that 90% of what you don't like about the NYC water is the excess of iron. If it weren't for that, Burton's actually would fit the bill for you.

However, I bet distilled water and a little salts would be cheaper than Volvic by a long shot.

--scott

I once found it made a huge improvement, compared to filtered New York City tap water, in brewing a Dancong.

I take your point: it would be wrong to assume one water’s best for all teas.

/Lew

Indeed. On the other hand...I need to apologize. I’ve done a bit more web searching on the topic of iron in water, and the more I looked the more it seemed 40mg/liter was an outlier. So I checked back at that NYC water quality report, and iron’s denominated in *micro*grams. So NYC tap’s iron level, while still higher than Volvic’s, might not be an obstacle. I really need to try this.

/Lew

Try the Burton's then... add it until you can taste it. When you can taste it you've used too much.

The thing about iron is that a lot of it is leached into pipes within an individual building if the building has older iron pipes. So even if the city count is low, the count at your tap can be high.

Iron is also a major problem for Kodak-chemistry color film processing as well. A friend of mine was moving his lab and did water samples from all prospective locations he was considering and the variation was very high.

--scott

OK, I went over to Brooklyn Homebrew yesterday evening and laid down 75 cents for a baggie of Burton/Trent salts. They didn?t have documentation that would let me figure out the milligrams of each ion per gram of the powder, but they did say they recommend that brewers use

So far, so good, I must say. I?ve brewed 3 different teas today that I?m extremely familiar with: Sikkim Temi, a not-so-great Phoenix oolong, and a pretty good Alishan oolong. They all came out significantly better than I?ve experienced with filtered NYC tap water alone. To varying extents with the 3 teas I?ve noticed improvements in aroma, taste, and mouth feel. And my wife says her coffee tastes a lot better with the mineral-doped water, too.

/Lew

It?s probably time to follow up my own post, since I?ve been using ?poor man?s Volvic? for about a week and a half now. I?m currently working with a lower concentration of Burton/Trent salts: about a half milligram per liter. The most consistent effect I get is that astringency is reduced a lot, so I can push the leaves harder in terms of steep temperature and duration without the liquor becoming harsh. I find myself using boiling PMV, e.g., with a very green, small-leaf Tieguanyin, which I wouldn?t do with unaltered New York City tap water. I?m typing this 20 minutes after a fifth steep of the TGY, and the huigan seems to go on forever.

/Lew

Actually, I should have read what I typed. It’s a half *gram*, not milligram, per liter that I’m adding to New York City tap water these days. Thanks to Wrongfucha for alerting me to this!

/Lew

Hi Lewis,

Which means that you experimented that Volvic performs badly? Did you try it with Japanese green teas, old sheng cha and wu yi wulong teas?

Volvic would indeed perform badly on such teas. It is not meant to be used with them.

No, I?m afraid I used an English idiom without considering that not all my readers are native speakers of the language. When I wrote ?poor man?s Volvic? it was not a value judgment, only an indication that the New York tap water plus added minerals was an cheap, improvised approximation to Volvic water. I continue to hold true Volvic in high regard. Also, since I?m now using a lower concentration of Burton/Trent salts in by tea brewing water, I?ve actually diverged more from true Volvic in order to compound an all-purpose water that might perform reasonably well with different types of tea leaves.

I have tried the ?poor man?s Volvic? with mediocre Wuyi oolong and have had good results. The oldest sheng Pu?er I?ve tried it with has been from 2003, and I was quite happy with the resulting liquor. I don?t have any sencha or gyokuro on hand currently.

What water do you like to use with these teas?

/Lew

Hi Lewis,

Oh, understood! It is true that I had been a bit confused when I read your last article.

With such teas, I use very low minerality (TDS about 20 or lower). Mont-Roucous or Montcalm water as far as I am concerned:

Incidentally, this finewaters.com web site is awesome :-)

pH of 6 - that?s pretty acidic.

Yes, it?s very informative; thanks!

I forgot to ask you: how would you describe the negative effect a water like Volvic has on greens and ?green? oolongs?

/Lew