Water Water Everywhere... What’s Your Water?
Greeting. I read that bone china teapot can enhance tea's tatse due to the calcium and testsubin kettle enhances tea's taste due to the iron. Can I crush some iron supplement pill and calcium supplement pill and add it to water to enhance tea taste?
welcome to the forum!
i don't think you're going to get a good result by crushing a supplement of any kind.
supplements are not pure substances. they have binders and other ingredients. even if you're on the right track to enhancing your water with additives, i'm pretty sure that the inert ingredients in supplements will give you a bad result in terms of flavor.
side note, i'm skeptical that bone china releases much mineral into the water. all the stuff i've used seems pretty vitrified and is glazed as well. can anyone chime in?
i don't think you're going to get a good result by crushing a supplement of any kind.
supplements are not pure substances. they have binders and other ingredients. even if you're on the right track to enhancing your water with additives, i'm pretty sure that the inert ingredients in supplements will give you a bad result in terms of flavor.
side note, i'm skeptical that bone china releases much mineral into the water. all the stuff i've used seems pretty vitrified and is glazed as well. can anyone chime in?
@Gin Welcome to TF! Pls introduce yourself at the Introduction section.
firstly, not all tetsubin makes water that is boiled in it sweeter. Neither does bone china enhance the taste due to calcium. We need to get this in the correct perspective.
secondly, adding crushed supplements into your water to enhance tea is pretty erroneous in many levels. Iron you get from Tetsubin and Calcium from fine bone china are naturally obtained through natural form. Supplements are synthetic by nature. You have to take into consideration other ingredients like fillers, preservatives and many more.
I would strongly advise against it.
Members of this forum have an ongoing discussion on Water, your may want to read up on it. I'm blessed with tap water that's good to go for brewing tea. I don't have extensive experience in this aspect. If you still want to explore with water, it would be a safer bet to buy a cast iron ball and add it into your kettle. If you want to experiment further, try getting an unused teapot lid and drop it inside your kettle. Just make sure you're using one with authentic Zisha clay.
Have fun exploring!.. Cheers!!
Just use a different bottled water. The water composition should be written in the bottle, or available online, to look it up.
@Gin I'm a bit sceptical about a glazed bone china teapot having a big effect on the tea or on calcium content. On the other hand, when it comes to cups, the glaze can indeed affect the taste.
Adding calcium to water is tricky because it doesn't dissolve easily, the trick is to dissolve it in sparkling water which is acidic due to the CO2, and then aerate it until all the CO2 evaporates and the PH neutralizes. It's discussed somewhere in the water thread @OCTO mentioned viewtopic.php?f=36&t=759 Of course, it's might be easier just to add some mineral water to your water if your water is too soft. There's also some highly interesting water experiments by @teasecret in the mentioned thread and also on https://teasecrets.home.blog/
Adding calcium to water is tricky because it doesn't dissolve easily, the trick is to dissolve it in sparkling water which is acidic due to the CO2, and then aerate it until all the CO2 evaporates and the PH neutralizes. It's discussed somewhere in the water thread @OCTO mentioned viewtopic.php?f=36&t=759 Of course, it's might be easier just to add some mineral water to your water if your water is too soft. There's also some highly interesting water experiments by @teasecret in the mentioned thread and also on https://teasecrets.home.blog/
Can you expand a bit on that? Is that because glazes are different? Or because glaze, without changing the tea itself, modifies the sensory experience of the drinker?
Yes, the sensory experience is of great importance, both the shape of the cup and the quality of the glaze which is in touch with the lips play a big role. Beyond that i don't know, all is possible, not every glaze is the same.
I think EoT recently offered in their teaclub a pair of cups identical except one gas fired and one wood fired - the claim was that there was a perceptible difference (perhaps due to difference in oxidation/reduction in the firing?)... Perhaps somebody in the club could share their experience...
Seeking a way to improve water without resorting to bottled and the climate-damaging impact of bottling and shipping around the world should be encouraged, not belittled.
The source of bone china having an impact could be hojo:
https://hojotea.com/en/posts-32/The bone China clearly increases the body, while the porcelain decreases the body. On the contrary, the porcelain increases the after taste. The glass tea cup gave the body and after taste just in between porcelain and bone China.
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In my understanding, the presence of calcium increases the body of water and tea. If you are familiar with Bone China ware, you will know that the surface of bone China is usually glazed with glass. During the glazing process, some calcium could be eluted into the glazing layer. As a result, the body of tea will be enhanced when we use a Bone China.
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BriarOcelot
- Posts: 43
- Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:42 pm
- Location: Montreal
I have read some exceedingly strange things on Hojo's site. Some truth, but quite a few things that seemed to not make much sense...
The plastic water bottle industry accounts for 0.52% of the global yearly CO2 emissions. Even if the whole industry would disappear overnight it wouldn't make a difference. So OP using bottled water for his/her tea isn't going to make the world a better/worse place. It's the energy sector where the change has to happen (1st Coal - 30%, 2nd Gas - 8%).
Ofc making your own water can be fun, but firstly it's better to find the ballpark, then go into the details. Bad Water can really have a huge effect and ruin your tea. So good water yields one of the highest ROI in terms of quality of tea sessions.
So I think the main problem with using a pill is that a large amount of iron and calcium would dissolve. I would recommend sending tetsubin water to a lab similar to ward labs and analyzing it for iron. Then you could see how much is in there and potentially dissolve that amount yourself. I personally doubt that tetsubins merely add iron to water, I think there's something else going on - perhaps is less about dissolved iron and more about a large amount of iron interfacing with the water.
Glazes have an enormous effect, it's true. I think it has something to do with porosity. It's all very interesting!
Glazes have an enormous effect, it's true. I think it has something to do with porosity. It's all very interesting!
Maybe I missed something in OPs post, but where did he/she mention the climate? Also, the supplement industry ain't exactly climate neutral.