Hi and HELP! WHAT IS THIS?

[Hanni]

Hi everyone reading! I haven't posted in a forum in years and not sure my photos will even attach! I don't even own a computer anymore, lol. But I need community on this one! What do you think this stuff is? At first I thought it was maybe ashes in my teaware as I am always outside, but today saw it is IN my kettle. Its like silt and if I hadn't just stopped with the super dark Liu Bao and moved to a white tea, I wouldn't have even known I was ingesting it.
Touching my tongue to it it has no taste. The only water thats ever been in this kettle is bottled. In my defense for using a metal kettle at all, let me add my stove us broken or I would be using my big clay kettle.

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[pedant]

probably just scale deposits (minerals). nothing to worry about.

if you want verification, you can do an acid test. put some of the sample in acid (distilled white vinegar, lemon juice, etc) and see if it fizzes. scale usually has a lot of carbonate in it, so carbon dioxide bubbles should evolve.

if the scale bothers you, you can clean your kettle with distilled white vinegar or citric acid solution. i just use vinegar (the smell goes away), but a lot of people are bothered by the smell and use citric acid for that reason.

[Baisao]

I second what Pedant has said and will add that you may want to use a bottled water with lower minerals and TDS. That’s a lot of scale.

I use mineral sachets for mineralizing distilled water for coffee (tea doesn’t need these) and my dedicated kettle for coffee develops scale rapidly. I use a light spring water for tea and have never had scale buildup on that kettle.