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

[karma]

Personally, for water, I fill up a 3 gallon bottle with RO water at WholeFoods and mineralize it with Topo Chico mineral water. It's the right balance of results, effort, and environmental impact as it involves no disposable plastics. I worry about the impact of recycling the glass bottles but I have yet to find another way to mineralize the water, that doesn't involve blending up powders and the purchases/effort that entails. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

In the past I have done this as well. Instead of recycling the glass, I just purchased a couple 5 gallon glass jugs, and loaded them on a crock.

Regarding remineralization, I have used ConcenTrace drops with good results.

The issue is more that Topo Chico is a sparkling mineral water that comes, at most, in 1.5 liter glass bottles. No spigot fill available.

[TeaTotaling]

Personally, for water, I fill up a 3 gallon bottle with RO water at WholeFoods and mineralize it with Topo Chico mineral water. It's the right balance of results, effort, and environmental impact as it involves no disposable plastics. I worry about the impact of recycling the glass bottles but I have yet to find another way to mineralize the water, that doesn't involve blending up powders and the purchases/effort that entails. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

In the past I have done this as well. Instead of recycling the glass, I just purchased a couple 5 gallon glass jugs, and loaded them on a crock.

Regarding remineralization, I have used ConcenTrace drops with good results.

The issue is more that Topo Chico is a sparkling mineral water that comes, at most, in 1.5 liter glass bottles. No spigot fill available.

Understood.

If you are conscientious about sustainability those drops might useful to you. You could simply add them to your 3-gallon jug, prior to filling up at Whole Foods, for a nice mineral infusion. Potentially, it could be more cost effective, as well.

To Water

[teasecret]

Really enjoying this new recipe I made.
Per gallon: 200mg baking soda, 34 mg potassium bicarbonate, 138 mg mgcl2 hexahydrate, 176mg gypsum dihydrate, 44mg cacl2, optional 40 mg silica (amorphous or colloid)

Resulting stats:
Hardness: 54 mg/L as CaCO3
Alkalinity: 36 mg/L as CaCO3
TDS (Calculated): 126
Ions in mg/L:
Ca: 14
Mg: 4
Na: 14
K: 4
HCO3: 44
SO4: 26
Cl: 19

This was derived with various mathematical molar ratios: for example, Cl:SO4 ratio is 2:1, Ca:Mg ratio is 2:1, Hardness:Alkalinity is 3:2. Tested with aged sheng, HK henry from TeasWeLike, with great success. Give it a try! Make sure you get good USP/Food Grade minerals. For silica, I used 4 drops eidon concentrate, but recyclesil might work. Handle all materials with care, don't breathe mineral dust!

image0 (2).jpg (57.88 KiB) Viewed 7491 times

[Baisao]

Regarding Topo Chico 1:9, letting the mixture sit overnight would release most of the CO2. It's a easy option to try for those of us who always have it on hand. It's a quarantine essential in Austin.

[pedant]

apologies to @Baisao, @LeoFox, @karma.
looks like i've stepped in it.

when i wrote that post about jones, i had in my head a mostly harmless tinfoil hat caricature. like his performance in A Scanner Darkly (2006). i wish he could have just stuck with that.

in fact, i have not followed him and i guess wasn't that familiar with his hateful/harmful side.

sorry for making anyone feel uncomfortable and for getting way off topic.

[karma]

@pedant that makes a lot of sense, I'd totally forgotten about that awesome movie. No harm no foul.

[karma]

@Baisao I've also found it a good way to get use out of any Topo that goes flat, and if not a good shake and then cracking the cap a little works well.

[Baisao]

@pedant, you've never been unreasonable or fringe so I assumed it was a misunderstanding. However, I did feel compelled to say something so that it's clear he doesn't get unchallenged support. Cheers!

[LeoFox]

Really enjoying this new recipe I made.
Per gallon: 200mg baking soda, 34 mg potassium bicarbonate, 138 mg mgcl2 hexahydrate, 176mg gypsum dihydrate, 44mg cacl2, optional 40 mg silica (amorphous or colloid)

Resulting stats:
Hardness: 54 mg/L as CaCO3
Alkalinity: 36 mg/L as CaCO3
TDS (Calculated): 126
Ions in mg/L:
Ca: 14
Mg: 4
Na: 14
K: 4
HCO3: 44
SO4: 26
Cl: 19

This was derived with various mathematical molar ratios: for example, Cl:SO4 ratio is 2:1, Ca:Mg ratio is 2:1, Hardness:Alkalinity is 3:2. Tested with aged sheng, HK henry from TeasWeLike, with great success. Give it a try! Make sure you get good USP/Food Grade minerals. For silica, I used 4 drops eidon concentrate, but biosil might work. Handle all materials with care, don't breathe mineral dust!

Wow!

Would love to see a high end teahouse offer choices of bespoke water like this.

[wave_code]

if anyone has any specific water that is available in most of Germany I'm all ears for suggestions. I'll only buy stuff in washable glass/plastic with pfand though (which seems to be most mineral waters that aren't nestle brands or so)- I can't stand the idea of producing any new plastic waste and the idea of shipping water around is already tough for me to get over.

I've been much happier with my tap water here than my old location. but, after getting used to it for quite a while now I've gotten curious to test it against some bottled waters to see how it compares. at least for everyday drinking I find it plenty good, but I'm curious to try it against some alternatives, or if I find something that makes a significant positive difference that is worth keeping on hand for special teas.

its always interesting to remind myself how big a difference this can make. picked up a couple things to try today on impulse, though I should have gotten multiple bottles of each. I was planning to use a smaller pot than I wound up using. I also need to get more of my baseline tea. the water I tested today I couldn't say exactly if it was positive or negative trying with just one tea, but made a very big difference. normally this liu bao brews up very dark with heavy flavors, but today was brewing very light and with a lot of bubbles. the mouthfeel was a lot thicker and the tea was smoother and noticeably sweeter, but it gave out quicker. also I think the strong heavier flavors and slight astringency is what I like about that tea, so for me the smoothing out was actually a negative, but if this had been a really heavily stored tea maybe it would have been beneficial. I can see how one quickly gets into a mess of having ideal water profiles for different teas just like clay.

aside from flavors/brewing do people find that the water has any significant effects on the qi of stronger teas? in theory it would make sense to me if the character of the water is changing the way different things are extracted from the leaf. but, we are also pretty good at fooling our bodies into thinking something is happening that might not be at times. despite today's brews coming out a lot lighter I felt like it went straight to my head, which normally this tea doesn't do.

[Baisao]

aside from flavors/brewing do people find that the water has any significant effects on the qi of stronger teas? in theory it would make sense to me if the character of the water is changing the way different things are extracted from the leaf. but, we are also pretty good at fooling our bodies into thinking something is happening that might not be at times. despite today's brews coming out a lot lighter I felt like it went straight to my head, which normally this tea doesn't do.

I'm sensitive to chaqi (unfortunately) and I have not noticed a difference in waters used despite changes in how they may attenuate extraction.

[Bac]

I have the luck to easily find S.Bernardo, a water source from the alps, it is pretty good with any kind of tea!
If i can't find that, then i buy S. Anna, wich is quite similar, tho slightly lighter in minerals.

Bac Are you in Italy somewhere? Other members that have mentioned San Bernardo water are in Italy as well. Let me know if you find a water quality report from this company, I can add it to our Water Data spread sheet.

Indeed im in italy, Here is the water mineral values:
Characteristic elements in mg / l
sodium 0.8
calcium 9.1
silica 4.2
solgates 2.6
nitrites <0.002
magnesium 0.6
potassium 0.4
bicarbonates 27.9
nitrates 1,4z
chlorides 0.8
total hardness in French degrees 2.5



fixed residue at 180 ° C: mg / l 34.5
specific electrical conductivity at 20 ° C: 48 cm
pH at the temperature of the water at the source: 7
free carbon dioxide at the source: mg / l 6.3

And two links:

https://www.sanbernardo.it/en/san-bernardo-the-water/
https://www.bereacasa.it/prodotto/acqua ... rale-15lt/

[Victoria]

Thanks @Bac will add info the the spread sheet.

[teasecret]

Wrote a post about an experiment I did where I replicated mgualt's toronto tap water. Hopefully it's interesting! https://teasecrets.home.blog/2020/12/06 ... tap-water/

It really was quite difficult but the result was pretty surprising, and much better than I expected.

[teasecret]

Sorry to double post, but I made that toronto water recipe again, and had a great session with 2004 Biyun Hao Manzhuan. Thought it would be interesting to record some tasting notes, half about the tea, and half about the water! https://teasecrets.home.blog/2020/12/12 ... nto-water/
I'll be moving on from the toronto replication to some more "theoretical" synthetic waters around 80-100 TDS. Starting to understand the effects of each ion and the ratios between them, roughly, although there's a lot more secrets to uncover.