TeaForum.org

belewfripp wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 11, 2021 4:17 pm

... A guy my age has an RDA of 1000 mg of calcium daily, and while I'd have to drink a lot of high-calcium tea to get up where I was when I was chewing on 10-12 antacid tablets/day, I tend to err on the side of caution since being thirsty all the time (basically the body is trying to wash out the extra calcium) is no fun.

And my ultimate goal, I think, is to be able to judge each tea as best I can - in other words, that if I don't like it it's because I actually don't like the tea, rather than because I am using wildly unsuitable water or teaware; and likewise, to avoid missing out of teas I would like as a result of the same variables. .

On a good day, I remember what RDA is.

More importantly, we learn that one could eat too much calcium & it could lead to thirst & need flushing out of one's body. What used to see happen frequently to so many people was that they took antacids for relief which unfortunately was temporary because the antacids stimulated acid production which required those people to take more antacids. The vicious cycle became less common when word of this got around, even to my ignorant hometown (Phillipsburg, New Jersey) and my overeating, antacid-gobbling family. However, it is so easy for such news to get drowned out by all the commercials for antacids. I suggest drinking hot water, cool water, or carbonated water & avoiding antacids unless on an airplane etc.

Anyway, sounds like you know how to keep your mind occupied. You might have very high standards for what you drink. Very good tea for me will still be good when prepared in "wrong" teaware; & all of my leaves are steeped in the same water (tap water filtered by sterasyl ceramic cylinders with charcoal inside).

If you decide to RO-filter at home, it would be interesting to read about your research into the various systems, especially if it is a small below the sink or countertop system. I think (i.e., do not really know, all RO water is not the same with a range from almost the same as distilled water to water that is mildly filtered).

Cheers

ok, but how does tea brewed with D₂O taste?

Sweet taste of heavy water
Natalie Ben Abu et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01964-y

Using psychophysics protocols, we show that strong nuclear quantum effects cause slowdown of metabolism upon deuteration via site-directed mutagenesis thereby opening the pleasurably sweet pranic gateways to universal oneness.

pedant wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:35 am

ok, but how does tea brewed with D₂O taste? :)

Sweet taste of heavy water
Natalie Ben Abu et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01964-y

Let me just crack open my fusion generator and harvest some quick-like...

Psyck wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:03 am

Using psychophysics protocols, we show that strong nuclear quantum effects cause slowdown of metabolism upon deuteration via site-directed mutagenesis thereby opening the pleasurably sweet pranic gateways to universal oneness.

:D

It will be interesting if more work is done to understand the exact mechanism - how does that one neutron change things so that that sweetness receptor is activated?

This was my water today - over the past two weeks I replicated water from the West tributary of the Pearl River Delta in China. This water flows all the way to Yunnan. I then made tea with it, and reported on it in this post! Finally my pure water is decent quality, so the water is becoming very enjoyable to drink and make tea with. Hopefully you find this interesting!

https://teasecrets.home.blog/2021/06/01 ... a-with-it/

teasecret wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:18 pm

This was my water today - over the past two weeks I replicated water from the West tributary of the Pearl River Delta in China. This water flows all the way to Yunnan. I then made tea with it, and reported on it in this post! Finally my pure water is decent quality, so the water is becoming very enjoyable to drink and make tea with. Hopefully you find this interesting!

https://teasecrets.home.blog/2021/06/01 ... a-with-it/

Wow, that is an incredibly detailed approach to water for tea I wish I had that level of dedication to getting quality water, but I'll admit I usually just use tap water filtered through the fridge. The tap water where I live is decent enough, although a bit on the hard side. Thankfully I haven't noticed any negative effects from my water, but that migut just be a case of not knowing what I'm missing, lol

Ackernym wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:17 pm

Wow, that is an incredibly detailed approach to water for tea I wish I had that level of dedication to getting quality water, but I'll admit I usually just use tap water filtered through the fridge. The tap water where I live is decent enough, although a bit on the hard side. Thankfully I haven't noticed any negative effects from my water, but that migut just be a case of not knowing what I'm missing, lol

Oh, I'm sure your tap is fine! I'm just obsessed with water and am working on figuring out how it works/exploring it.

Oh yeah, it's definitely good enough! Compared to my tapwater when I was in college, the water now is a godsend! I can actually drink it straight without gagging haha

teasecret wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:22 pm

.... I'm just obsessed with water and am working on figuring out how it works/exploring it.

1 1/2 hours just to measure & add minerals to distilled water! That's more time than I will spend to cook even when I am having a guest come to dinner. Harmless fun = pleasure, right? Cheers

Curious, Trader Joe’s Artesian New Zealand water is fine for first two steeps with Oolong and Darjeeling, but then very quickly reduces subsequent steeps into flat tannic horribilis. Wonder what in the water is causing this. The only red flag compared to other waters member use is high alkalinity and sodium. TDS is 88, pH 8.1, Alkalinity 110, Hardness 15.8, Calcium 3.8, Magnesium 1.6, Sodium 41. @teasecret any ideas?

I still find it obscene to use water that is not at least from the closest possible and acceptable source.

While I do understand that some places do not have the -what should be normal- luxury of having drinkable water without causing health concerns and have to rely on bottled water, importing water from far-away places is just wrong in so many ways... I mean there is no good excuse I can think of to get water from glaciers in Norway...

Getting our teas from long distances away can not be avoided, but our choice of water can be made more sustainably.

@Bok: your sentiment must apply more broadly than just to water (wine, beer, food products, and wherever there is a local alternative to a foreign item, even if it is not a perfect match), but it somehow seems instinctively, and especially, 'inexcusable' when the product in question is mere water that's being shipped across the world (especially if it comes in heavy glass bottles).

It is quite odd that I can get Italian, Norwegian and Finnish water at shops down here, but I can't seem to find the one from New Zealand that @Victoria mentioned above.

Presumably, in any given country, the general market demand for premium (not necessarily high-quality) foreign water is greater than the demand for high-quality local water. I suppose that the sentiment might be, why would a restaurant serve some water from an unknown local stream when it can serve San Pellegrino, for example. And I assume that restaurants make up a large proportion of that market.

Another issue of course is the need to 'do justice' to the tea that we import by using decent water. But of course, your point remains valid, so long as there is something nearby that is a good water (or which we can turn into good water).

I'd love to learn about what good sources of water there are around me, but so far, I've failed to find any. Perhaps I should try harder, but I don't know who else would be 'into' water the way that tea drinkers are (for example, I haven't seen baristas brew coffee using bottled water; not yet, anyway).

Andrew

Andrew S wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:40 pm

Bok: your sentiment must apply more broadly than just to water (wine, beer, food products, and wherever there is a local alternative to a foreign item, even if it is not a perfect match), but it somehow seems instinctively, and especially, 'inexcusable' when the product in question is mere water that's being shipped across the world (especially if it comes in heavy glass bottles).

Of course... but in our globalised world anything we buy comes at a much heavier price than the one attached. As you said humble water is especially inexcusable as you put it.

I would actually prefer glass bottles, at least those can be recycled and do not hang around in everything forever until our species chokes and dies out from them...

To add to Bok's point, there is usually good regionally bottled water available when we travel. It may take trying a few to find the one that works well for tea. I think a reasonable goal for us is decent water, not the very best at any cost in $ or damage to the environment which includes fuel being burned by the shipping. Yet, there are temptations. We will not always worry about doing right by posterity.

Jimmy Carter, President of the USA, well before most members were born, made his re-election highly unlikely by making a speech saying we should have a conscience that should guide us as consumers. We should know that we cannot use more more & more & consume less... The concept of reducing conspicuous consumption was as obscene to some people then as some find water & food traveling thousands of miles to be used by people who could find something very much the same from much closer sources, to be obscene now.

50 years after Carter's speech, I see empty plastic water bottles everywhere. Some people consider themselves responsible by putting plastic & paper in the bins for recycling (when such bins are handy). To consider protecting the environment beyond recycling, is not likely to become a new habit for lots of people.

Styrofoam put into a bin for paper & plastic (because the message that it cannot be recycled & is one of the worst products for damaging the environment became "Styrofoam should be recycled" for some people), can make one lose all hope. I try to remember that people are more than the damage we do. Hopefully, good is done by us to balance our bad acts. We can forgive a lot; but how much our planet can forgive, is another question.

If I should not be using something regularly, I often won't try it. Why know that there is something that I really like that I cannot afford to buy or the environment cannot afford to provide me?

@Bok, I appreciate the sentiment and I am similarly environmentally conservative. We live in a drought prone area so I take care not to waste water or set the ocean on fire.

Apart from remineralizating RO or distilled water, what choices are available to those of us with water that is poor for tea?

The artesian water here is good for beers but it’s not available to most of us. The tap water, sourced from lakes, is not ideal for anything but bathing. It has a noxious amount of chloramine that is detectable even after filtering and sitting overnight, a reasonably high TDS, and some fishiness. The minerals are alright but the additives and fishiness are the most unpleasant aspect of our water.

A Brita filter is hit or miss. Black Berkey filters are marginally acceptable. RO and distilled are nasty.

Water quality in the US isn’t that great. Testing focuses on safety and little else. And water plants frequently fail to meet EPA guidelines.

That leaves moving to some distant land or drinking smelly prepared tea from filtered tap water.

[edit]

Oops! I made a mistake: it wasn’t me. That was a multi-billion dollar corporation that set the ocean on fire. I just wasted a little water in a rinse. But governments and mega-corps still want people like us to feel guilty for indiscretions that are truly minor while they commit acts of environmental and social destruction on unimaginable scales. I’m nobody’s fool or scapegoat.

Exxon alone had a carbon footprint of 528 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The average carbon footprint for a person in the United States is 16 tons. It’s averaged at 4 tons internationally.

Could my footprint be smaller? Certainly! But there are many somethings I already compromise on and a few that I never will.