In the old form of this same topic discussion people would speculate about how individual minerals in tea brewing water affect compound extraction and tea character, and then map their own preferences to specific versions of bottled water, or discuss using local spring water, often referencing colorful stories about secret sources. Times have changed, and it's on to researching more ideal mineral profiles for water. These are often presented as either one general recipe working out well enough for all teas or else identifying and tailoring mineral blend recipes for individual tastes, purposes, and tea types. Fascinating stuff!
One generality isn't made clear in all that I'll summarize or discuss here: per my understanding some minerals help support other compound extraction from tea, it's not that you are tasting those minerals directly in the water / brewed tea. Maybe that comes into play, maybe more related to an input like silica than minerals like calcium and magnesium, but I haven't really ran across a complete account of these sorts of cause and effect sequences, what causes what, or rather how it works instead.
Let's start with that history first; it might be of interest to some, as it was to me. Tea Chat was a main older discussion forum, and there are lots of threads on this topic, but here is a main one from 2011. I think even back then people were clear on low levels of minerals potentially working out for some tea types, but in general with a moderate level of calcium and magnesium helping extract positive compounds better. Then "hard water," versions with really high calcium content, or else just high total dissolved solids (TDS), total mineral content, wouldn't be regarded as favorably. Lots of calcium can even cause a scum to form on the tea, partly a cosmetic issue in addition to an experiential problem.
I wrote about this subject based on trying out Volvic in comparison against my local filtered tap water in this post, the second of two. There were a lot of related discussions about that topic around then in a Facebook group that I moderate, here. For people mapping preferences to standard bottled types, or local water sources, then relying on trial and error and hearsay input, that review and discussion only ever went so far.
Tea Curious took a next step, when they developed an "open source" water mineral recipe for "ideal water" back in 2020, here, a page that also works as an introduction to lots of the related theme and factors. Rie Taluli was involved in that development; maybe her name rings a bell, as one of those known tea people, someone I've enjoyed talking to online. I can't judge any of these sorts of recipes or developments myself, so the theme here is about passing on a summary, not leading towards that level and type of evaluation.
A second main development step gives us a lot more to go on, which is well-documented across lots of clear background, related to what Empirical Tea / Empirical Water (related sites) have been developing, and what the Tea Curious blog has been discussing. It might sound like I'm trying to establish a chronology of development more than I really intend; to me it's just interesting taking note of these milestones along with main publicly available references. Let's check into that, before the main discussion of what Empirical Tea / Water has developed, with limited comparison to the Tea Curious ideas. The Empirical Tea site lists this for a history:
Hello. My name is Arby, and I’ve been drinking good tea since February 2018.
Over this (short) time, I’ve become more and more obsessed with the science of what consumers can do at home to bring the best out of their tea. This includes experimenting with tea storage, tinkering with custom water recipes, and more. I will be using this platform to provide updates on things I’ve learned and experienced in the realm of tea.
As of 2021, I have decided to dedicate my life to studying tea academically. As I continue to learn and improve as a researcher over the years, expect to see better-designed experiments.
As far as that online site history per the Wayback Machine scan that site might've been set up in October of 2020, or at least that's their first backup snapshot, so he was putting developed ideas out there even earlier (than that later date). To me it doesn't matter so much that he's 5 years into exploring better tea, although I get it that some people might like to judge their own personal tea history with others in different ways. In discussing the early development of the Truth Serum formula Arby said that he wasn't aware of the Tea Curious work at that time, but it probably wouldn't have made much difference either way.
In a main reference, a Crimson Lotus podcast discussion, Arby's friend and author of the Tea Secrets blog joined him. Checking that blog timeline the earliest post on water review was in May of 2021, but for sure his exploration didn't start then, for how well developed that first listed post is. Both of them have been at this awhile.
This isn't really intended as a claim that they followed Tea Curious in timing, but maybe, or any sort of guess about the Empirical Water and Tea Secrets histories. These are just dates this content identifies, which we can take as one form of implied online history. I didn't try to identify if anyone else has been exploring and developing these themes over the past few years; if so my apologies to them for any potentially implied lack of credit, which was not intended. These sources are simply enough to tell a bit of a related story, to cover a sampling of some core themes and ideas, with the limitation here that I won't be able to cover detailed findings.
Empirical Tea / Empirical Water research, presented findings, and public access recipes
People interested in following this up should start with that podcast blog intro and then spend a couple of hours browsing those three sites, but of course I'm still going to summarize parts of it.
One main theme is development of a "Truth Serum" version of a water mineral recipe, described as including appropriate mineral content for extracting a lot from a tea for the purpose of evaluation. Recipes for three different mineral blends are here, that one plus and older version and one more special purpose type, designed for a certain outcome.
Would it be easy to grab the related equipment and buy the food-safe mineral components to make those recipes, adding that to either distilled or low mineral content reverse osmosis processed water? Surely not. This Tea Secrets post probably works as well as others related to basic context, what is involved, related to range of minerals and equipment. This is a recipe there of an updated Truth Serum version, which will help support comparison of that to the Tea Curious recipe version in a next section.
One starting point might be reading up on Tea Secrets blog posts reviewing different commercial water versions, with commentary and judgement about them, how well they perform in relation to brewing different tea types. The next step, re-creating these blends, would be a bit more involved. Empirical Tea sells a mix version they've created; that might work as an interim step, to judge if the next levels of review and effort are of interest or not.
Jumping around a bit between related themes, this Truth Serum version was intended for evaluation, as presented, and other mineral mixes could suit others better for specific tea type preparation. Personal preference would define "better" in this case, a running theme across all tea experience. Let's compare two tea brewing water mineral content recipes, which does circle back to that idea.
Before that one related clarification, there is an earlier and more recent Truth Serum versions listed on the related sites in these two places:
1. https://empiricaltea.com/water-recipe-truth-serum/
2. https://empiricalwater.com/products/truth-serum
Comparing the Tea Curious and Truth Serum versions
Better interpretation of these would definitely involve embracing a learning curve, including the Tea Secrets blog, Empirical Water content, and Tea Curious page. To keep going one could review a listing of other tea writers' reviews and thoughts on their work and specific recipes, which would require a good bit of review time expenditure.
Let's keep this simple, and check out the listings of final mineral amounts, similar to those we definitely see on the back of bottled water versions, starting with the Tea Curious version:
Together, this leaves us with a water with (roughly) 7 PPM calcium, 2 PPM magnesium, 5 PPM sodium, 5 PPM potassium, 11 PPM chlorine, 10 PPM sulfate, and 14 PPM carbonates and bicarbonates: or around 58-59 PPM, right in our target range after the slight variation you'll get in even the most accurate home scales.
By now you might be wondering why this water is so dang light, especially compared to the targets specified in the coffee industry, but this just seems to be what tea prefers: as a leaf rather than a fruit + roasted bean, it relies on slightly different mechanisms to get to the ideal brew...
Note that this single webpage cited contains background framing, description of the role of different minerals, how to go about creating the same final mix, and links to related sales offerings (you can buy a mix from them, or a form of food grade, soluble silica--best to let them describe what that's about).
The values do sound low, at least in relation to discussions I've seen about ideal ranges for calcium and magnesium content. But then hearsay I remember from discussions from years ago is of essentially no value at all, even though a little on that is in one of those old blog posts. Let's check a Truth Serum version (cited as an updated version in a Tea Secrets post in 2021):
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These actually match more than one might expect, given the Truth Serum version is presented as including a mix designed to aggressively extract more compounds, part of the "experiencing the whole truth" of a tea version theme, versus the Tea Curious version being made for more general use.
That Tea Secrets Water Guide post unpacks how these affect outcome individually (in summary form; one gets the sense the depth of those interactions goes on and on), with a sample from that showing how it tends to read:
Hardness to Alkalinity Ratio – The ratio of hardness to alkalinity. The higher this value is, the more acidic/bright/vibrant the resulting tea is. The lower it is, the smoother/thicker/darker it is. What’s the optimum value? It depends! But probably above 0.8 and below 1.5.
Right, it's not easy to interpret without taking a few passes through it all to piece the parts together. This is also why I would recommend starting with that podcast discussion version, to hear the backstory first, and some of these ideas explained, mixed in with a lot of other related discussion.
From here one might cross-compare this with lots of information on common bottled water sources, either mainstream often-recommended versions or else what Tea Secrets posts review, which seem to be two sets that don't overlap much. In discussion of good alternatives in that podcast the brand suggestions didn't sound so familiar, but then I avoid drinking water from any kinds of bottles, for the obvious reason, it's just not necessary and it creates waste.
Awhile back in those rudimentary water input review posts I compared local tap water (which had been tested for mineral content in a snapshot source I found, but which would surely vary a lot day to day) with Volvic; here is that label:
Note that parts per million is mg / liter; the metric system is just great. What is the effect of all those bicarbonates going to be? No idea, but this is where input from that Tea Secrets blog can pass on at least one well-informed person's opinion (the first and last table lines):
I'm still not sure after reading that, but with a good bit of experiential exposure I'm sure it would become clearer.
It's interesting how one might arrive at a too-hasty summary conclusion, contrasting a water version designed for essentially maximizing extraction (to an extent; it must not be that simple), and one designed as a broad-scope optimum. It would be easy to think dialing up most mineral content would work better for maximum intensity, perhaps even better performance when tasting milder teas, and that lower mineral content may well be better when tea intensity is high to begin with, a very common theme in sheng pu'er experience. Probably far more nuanced conclusions would follow from extensive experience, a mapping between those mineral input functions, a tea type and version's character, and personal preference, one that might never completely sort out.
Comparing this to my own limited water version trial experience
Back in those two trial sessions that I wrote blog posts about, before all this was developed, two main points stood out, which could help place all this. That evaluation and those findings are so rudimentary compared to this developed take that maybe I shouldn't go there, but why not? It's relevant input, even if limited in scope and review input basis. Summarized general conclusions:
1. round by round aspect comparison results were at times just different, not clearly better or worse, since the set of aspects just varied slightly in a few different ways.
2. in the second set of two version trials one water type seemed clearly superior in early rounds of tasting, related to overall experienced results, and not as positive as the other in the later rounds.
No need to read too much into that; it was a cursory account of very little actual experience. But in none of the three trials cases did it summarize to "this water version was much better." Citing an example of comments relating to #1 can clarify that:
[Alishan light rolled oolong review]
Volvic: pleasant; sweet, rich, soft, intense but not overly so. Floral range is slightly different, but the difference is so subtle it is hard to pin down. The point here isn't to derive a flavor-list as much as specify differences anyway.
Tap water: more intense; it pops a little more. A touch more vegetal edge goes along with that, and more mineral. It comes across as creamier. These are definitely different, but again which is better would be a judgment call. The higher intensity is nice but a touch more vegetal range comes with that.
Then the next post, reviewing two different teas in two tastings (pretty good Wuyishan Rou Gui and Lao Man E sheng pu'er), based on the same water type comparison, draws the other conclusion cited:
It's crazy that two main shifts occurred in difference, varying a lot in early and later rounds. Volvic brewed tea was clearly much better over the first two infusions, and clearly not as positive in the last, probably more even in the fourth, with tap water working just a little better in that round too. I can't really unpack or explain that. Somehow a shift in flavor and feel proportion across rounds favored the Volvic earlier on, and then the filtered tap water later (which probably contains a lot less mineral).
Note that a reference source testing local Bangkok water supply samples probably did point towards a general mineral distribution range my tap water might be in at any given time, with that backed off a bit by filtering it at home, but those test results were only a snapshot, so not accurate over time.
Of course I wouldn't expect that to be a universal generality, across all tea types, that this pattern would just keep repeating comparing these water versions. It's tempting to guess that Volvic had a generally higher mineral content and extracted a lot more tea compounds earlier on, since some minerals support tea compounds extraction, then that these just weren't available for further extraction in later rounds, so tap water gave better results later on, but that may or may not be the case. This is more just an account of what I experienced, versus a probable explanation of inputs and outputs.
I will probably follow up and try some designed-for-purpose water type in later trials, not to the extent others cited have, not in the form of years worth of experimentation. But let's touch a little on how this relates to my philosophy on tea.
I'm not trying to optimize my tea experiences. I don't measure dry weight of teas, although the wetted tea level in gaiwans always ends up where I expect it to. After limited experimentation with clay pots--I only own three, probably not good versions of any type--I switched back to using gaiwans instead, which provide suitable results. For using a thermos for brewing water limited heat loss over time would cause minor variation in brewing temperature, which I'm ok with. I can't spend a lot pursuing the highest quality versions of teas, and I don't regret that, it's fine drinking what I get to. I like basic, or probably above average quality and novelty of style teas, and prefer to keep the tea experiences simple.
For reviews I won't eat any food with the teas, and try to set aside an hour or longer to just focus on the experience in order to describe it clearly. For daily drinking I will eat a light breakfast with teas, without necessarily pairing optimum foods with versions. I'll often have toast and tropical fruit as a breakfast (I live in Thailand), and I don't think that's necessarily ideal pairing for any tea types. Related to ceremonial brewing forms I'm essentially Buddhist, not that I do much with most labels, but I don't see most of my tea experience as some sort of exercise in mindfulness, any more than the rest of my life.
So in conclusion I want to express much gratitude and respect to the creators of the ideas I've summarized, and maybe haven't really done justice to. They've done fantastic work, genuinely researching and communicating findings openly. I don't see how any tea enthusiast couldn't appreciate and relate to this work, even without it leading to their own water source exploration.
I probably will follow up with further experiential review myself, I'm just in an unusual life phase just now, so maybe not for another couple of months, or this could be sidelined much longer. In the end I'm most likely to drink filtered tap water, probably just in Honolulu instead of here (Bangkok), within another month, but it would still be interesting exploring this subject on a much deeper level.
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