12.08.04
Water for Green Tea..
A lot of these postings will come from questions I receive, so here’s one for you. The customer wanted to know what kind of water he should use to brew his green tea. Tap water, mineral water, etc. Basically, you want good water but that doesn’t necessarily mean absolutely pure, distilled water. In Japan, water was and sometimes still is heated in iron kettles known as “kama.” Some of the iron from the kettle makes it’s way into the water and it is said that it makes an excellent tasting green tea brew. If you look around, you will find quite a few tea connoisseurs out there who actually prefer to brew with mineral water (the uncarbonated kind, of course.) One can even use tap water, depending on where you live. In Phoenix, Arizona where I originate from, the water is so horrible one would never consider brewing green tea from the tap. Many people have a reverse osmosis unit as we did, and that is very good water for brewing green tea.
This leads me to something that most people never consider. Believe it or not, how you heat the water makes a difference in the taste of your green tea. If you boil your water in a microwave, it will release more oxygen from the water than if you boil in a kettle, and this tends to make the tea taste flat. I noticed when brewing with a kettle that the tea would get a real nice green aromatic foam on top, yet this never would occur with water heated in a microwave. Also, if you cool your water ( you know it can’t be too hot, right?!) using the traditional Japanese method of pouring the water back and forth between teacups, more oxygen is added to the water. So, although I resisted doing all of this for quite some time, there is logic to it. Something to consider.
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