Water Water Everywhere... What’s Your Water?

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Bok
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Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:30 pm

rdl wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:11 pm
Victoria wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:33 pm
Arsenic removed from bottled water, was then being dumped into an on-site ‘Arsenic Pond’ that was leaching into California water system. I use this water as a backup to my local tap. https://patch.com/california/banning-be ... ilty-pleas
I can use a word I'm not sure I ever used before. I'm flabbergasted. How could water, so basic, wreak such havoc? How can a company think isolating and dumping such a harmful chemical is a good idea?
likely because it is cheaper... most long-mid term stupid decisions boil down to a preference of short term personal gain over sustainable gain for everyone.
faj
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Tue Jan 21, 2020 6:28 am

Bok wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:30 pm
likely because it is cheaper... most long-mid term stupid decisions boil down to a preference of short term personal gain over sustainable gain for everyone.
It is true that organizations will sometimes take shortcuts to increase profit. Crime pays when you do not get caught, and one company being caught does not prove that, on average, cheating is a bad bet for a greedy individual or group.

The law is an imperfect way to protect commons like our shared environment. Difficulty to enforce laws is one reason, but actually defining laws that correctly defend commons if they are adhered to probably is a much bigger issue. Most of the pollution humankind generates is legal, but no less damaging. We all take decisions that are probably not sustainable on the long term, and most of these decisions are entirely legal.

Pointing fingers at polluters is appropriate, but we cannot rely only on (existing) laws, even if perfectly enforced, to protect us from taking individual or collective decisions that will look stupid in hindsight from an environmental standpoint.
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Psyck
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Sun Feb 02, 2020 12:31 pm

My home drinking water is RO. Until now I have been remineralising it by adding some bottled Himalayan spring water to it.

I have now started using a mineral concentrate to minimise bottled water usage.


Preparing more complex concentrates is probably a rabbit hole I don't want to get into.
https://blog.khymos.org/2012/01/04/mine ... -la-carte/
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Victoria
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Sun Feb 02, 2020 3:42 pm

Interesting analysis and series of experiments @Psyck. So far for the group chart that we will posted at the beginning of this thread I’ve been tracking;
TDS, pH, ALKALINITY, HARDNESS, CALCIUM, MAGNESIUM, SODIUM, POTASSIUM
Any idea what your numbers might be? From what I’ve researched these are the main constituents in what makes good water for tea.

Earlier in this thread @teasecret shared a similar set of ingredients using 100 mg baking soda, 75 mg calcium chloride, and 50 mg epsom salt for a gallon of filtered tap - so not reverse osmosis.
.m.
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Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:51 pm

My (oversimplified) take is that these recipes are essentially trying to add Ca(HCO3)2 without adding CaCO3. The HCO3- comes from the baking soda, while epsom salt supplies Mg+, which seems less desirable then Ca+, but easier to add.
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Baisao
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Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:31 pm

.m. wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:51 pm
My (oversimplified) take is that these recipes are essentially trying to add Ca(HCO3)2 without adding CaCO3. The HCO3- comes from the baking soda, while epsom salt supplies Mg+, which seems less desirable then Ca+, but easier to add.
What taste difference if any is there between calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate?
.m.
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Mon Feb 03, 2020 9:34 am

Baisao wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:31 pm
.m. wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 6:51 pm
My (oversimplified) take is that these recipes are essentially trying to add Ca(HCO3)2 without adding CaCO3. The HCO3- comes from the baking soda, while epsom salt supplies Mg+, which seems less desirable then Ca+, but easier to add.
What taste difference if any is there between calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate?
Good question, and i don't have the answer. Calcium bicarbonate, i believe, gives the water thickness and sweetness. It also precipitates through boiling which regulates its amount even if the initial water was highly mineral. In the past i have lived in a place where the local tap water would produce substantial amounts of precipitated sediments at the bottom of my kettle, yet i have considered it to be very good for tea. Calcium carbonate, on the other hand, doesn't precipitate, and a water with a high amount of it is just completely lifeless. But, i'm not sure how it affects the water in moderate amounts. Very often the two come together.
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Psyck
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Mon Feb 03, 2020 11:28 am

Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 3:42 pm
Earlier in this thread teasecret shared a similar set of ingredients using 100 mg baking soda, 75 mg calcium chloride, and 50 mg epsom salt for a gallon of filtered tap - so not reverse osmosis.
That is a bad idea and from his comments I gather that he has stopped doing so. Those kind of ratios are only meant to be added to Distilled/Deionised/RO waters. You can add home brewed mineral concentrates to other waters too if you feel your water is low on certain components, but you must test and correct the ratios appropriately.
Victoria wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 3:42 pm
Interesting analysis and series of experiments Psyck. So far for the group chart that we will posted at the beginning of this thread I’ve been tracking;
TDS, pH, ALKALINITY, HARDNESS, CALCIUM, MAGNESIUM, SODIUM, POTASSIUM
Any idea what your numbers might be? From what I’ve researched these are the main constituents in what makes good water for tea.
Magnesium adds flavour and Calcium adds body. A basic mineral concentrate with just Epsom salt and baking soda is very easy to prepare and use for beginners. While Calcium ions can also easily be added via Calcium carbonate (dissolved carbon dioxide in water reacts with calcium carbonate to form soluble calcium bicarbonate), it is apparently not as easy to get the right ratios - there are people in the CommuniTEA Discord experimenting with it for a while and still unable to come up with proper ratios. So, other than the two links I provided, I'm personally not aware of any other suggested mineral concentrate ratios for tea water that are dependable.

The comments in the reddit link, quoted below, explained the numbers.
In short, the recipe adds about 5 mg/L of Magnesium ions plus a bunch of carbonates and sulphates and whatever else my RO water already had to get to an overall TDS of close to a 100.

"
I think everyone is lower on the Mg content then they think. It seems the Epsom salt you get at the store is a heptahydrate, meaning it is really MgSO4•7H2O not MgSO4. That means that when you weigh it out on a scale over 50% of the weight is water, not MgSO4. So your 9.6 g of Epsom salt is really only about 4.8g of MgSO4.

your recipe (approximate):

4800 mg / 0.480 L = 10,000 mg/L MgSO4

10,000 mg/L * 0.00883 L = 88.3 mg MgSO4

88.3 mg / 3.785 L = 23.3 mg/L MgSO4

(24 g Mg+2 / 120 g MgSO4) * 23.3 mg/L MgSO4 = 4.66 mg/L Mg+2
"
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doomslayer
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Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:28 pm

Any water recommendations for PNW / West Coast?
Hello! I've been a tea drinker for a long time but last years have been busy and I haven't touched my tea collection. A recent visit to Victoria, BC has rekindled my tea passion and I want to go back to drinking my teas.

Before life got busy, I lived in upstate NY. When I first moved there, I experimented with water and eventually found a Vermont water company selling those big office-sized bottles that worked really well for teas (I usually experiment on green teas because they give particularly obvious results when water is bad).

I live in Seattle now and unfortunately that Vermont water company does not deliver here (shocking, I know). I am curious if there are any water recommendations you can give me so that I can either avoid or at least minimize the trial and error process I had to go through when I first moved to upstate NY.

(I am going through this thread right now but in the meantime curious if there are any people around here from the same area who found water that works well)
Last edited by Victoria on Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Mod edit: moved post
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Victoria
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Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:00 pm

doomslayer wrote:
Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:28 pm
Any water recommendations for PNW / West Coast?
Hello! I've been a tea drinker for a long time but last years have been busy and I haven't touched my tea collection. A recent visit to Victoria, BC has rekindled my tea passion and I want to go back to drinking my teas.

Before life got busy, I lived in upstate NY. When I first moved there, I experimented with water and eventually found a Vermont water company selling those big office-sized bottles that worked really well for teas (I usually experiment on green teas because they give particularly obvious results when water is bad).

I live in Seattle now and unfortunately that Vermont water company does not deliver here (shocking, I know). I am curious if there are any water recommendations you can give me so that I can either avoid or at least minimize the trial and error process I had to go through when I first moved to upstate NY.

(I am going through this thread right now but in the meantime curious if there are any people around here from the same area who found water that works well)
Since you are new to Seattle, you might enjoy visiting @FloatingLeaves, the owner Shiuwen has many Taiwanese teas and can discuss local water sources. I use Crystal Geyser, Alpine Spring (by CG Roxane Olancha, CA) these days, it’s cheap and works really well with many teas. If I need something with lower TDS I’ll get Iceland Spring. Your local tap filtered might be just fine as well. A few local members in Seattle might be able to make other local water source recommendations @swordofmytriumph,
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doomslayer
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Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:11 pm

Just checked the map and Floating Leaves is really close to where I live and I anyway go to that area almost every week for a farmer's market so I'll definitely stop by and say hello! I'll look around for Crystal Geyser and Alpine Spring - just off the top of my head I don't remember seeing this water but I'll look around, it's probably available here. I think I'll also get Volvic just to serve as a benchmark, it's the water I used on the east coast and I know it works reasonably well. Ultimately I hope I can find something similar to what I had when I lived next to Vermont - a local company that delivers those big office-like bottles. I feel really bad about all the plastic trash that comes with using Volvic and such.

Which teas do you think are the best to test on? In the past I was always running my tests on greens but I currently don't have any around. I might have green oolongs though, assuming they are still okay after sitting on the shelf for several years.
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Victoria
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Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:19 pm

doomslayer wrote:
Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:11 pm
Which teas do you think are the best to test on? In the past I was always running my tests on greens but I currently don't have any around. I might have green oolongs though, assuming they are still okay after sitting on the shelf for several years.
If you can start with a tea that you know, as a benchmark, and that you liked in the past. Also, your tap might be just fine, I think another local @swordofmytriumph uses filtered tap and likes it, and @bentz98125, @AozoraE are in Seattle.
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doomslayer
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Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:24 pm

Yup I've read all the posts in the thread and I'll now definitely try tap water as well. I didn't think about this originally because in the past (in a completely different part of the US) I had horrible results with tap water. Back then I assumed it was because of the random chemicals they add to the tap water for various reasons and I also assumed that it's going to be the same across the US. But perhaps this assumption was wrong, I'll definitely give it a try here.
swordofmytriumph
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Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:35 pm

Victoria wrote:
Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:19 pm
If you can start with a tea that you know, as a benchmark, and that you liked in the past. Also, your tap might be just fine, I think another local swordofmytriumph uses filtered tap and likes it, and bentz98125, AozoraE is in Seattle.
I don’t live in Seattle proper, but half an hour east so I’m not on Seattle city water. I don’t even filter, because my suburb doesn’t add chlorine or anything else to the water. Something about the groundwater being low enough underground not to need it.

That said, the actual Seattle city water I have tried isn’t too bad in terms of the hard/soft scale, I recommend trying a Brita filter with your tap water.

Also welcome, fellow Seattleite!
swordofmytriumph
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Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:46 pm

doomslayer wrote:
Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:24 pm
Back then I assumed it was because of the random chemicals they add to the tap water for various reasons and I also assumed that it's going to be the same across the US. But perhaps this assumption was wrong, I'll definitely give it a try here.
You can filter out chemicals but hard water is just gross no matter what.

I’ll be interested to see how your filtered tap water turns out. I’m gonna have to move this year and I will lose access to my current amazing water, so I’ll probably need to do something similar when I move :(
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