Recently I was having tea with a friend and she started talking about the different ways she pours water. We were having a pretty strong shengpu from Lao Man’e, a region within Bulang known for particularly bitter teas.
As we waited for the clay kettle to boil, she explained how there’s two ways she might pour. The first is to hit the leaves directly with a strong concentrated stream, holding the kettle fairly high above the pot, and pouring pretty aggressively into the same spot. This generates a lot of steam and produces a stronger and more bitter brew.
The second way is to keep the kettle closer to the pot, and pour gently in a clockwise circular motion, so the stream of water keeps moving across the leaves. This, she explained, produces a softer and more balanced brew, with better salivation effect, and is particularly beneficial for something like a strong Bulang tea.
Water, and how we use it, is something I tend to take for granted, though of course is hugely significant in making tea. I’ve had many conversations about this with people in Taiwan— it’s a subject that comes up rather often. Like, “such-and-such teahouse is okay, but their water isn’t great.”
Another time recently, I was at Stop By Teahouse, one of my main haunts, and was introduced to a Hong Kong-based pu’er producer sitting at the next table. We sat down to drink and right away he commented that the gooseneck-style electric kettle we were using wasn’t adequate for his tea— that while the long spout is fine for oolong, it cools the water too much for pu’er. So we corrected course by pouring boiling water into the waste water bowl before each steep, to ensure minimal heat loss along the route of that long spout.
He’s something of a regular at Stop By and has gone so far as to bring his favorite short-spout electric kettle from Hong Kong, along with a step-up voltage converter, of course. It’s set up at one of the tables at the teahouse, even when he’s not there. He does happen to be friends with the owner.
Oh and speaking of water quality at teahouses, the water at Stop By always comes with a few chunks of bamboo charcoal in the kettle, and performs quite well. It also leads to a distinctive sound every time you reheat, almost like rocks rattling around in a tin can. There’s something comforting about a quiet afternoon in a teahouse, with that occasional rattling sound in the background. And it’s another subtle reminder of how important good water is.
In the past year I’ve also made the switch from electric kettle to clay kettle/infrared hot plate for drinking at home, and it’s been pretty revelatory. In some fifteen years of drinking it’d somehow never seemed that important, but boy what a difference does it make. Not even just in terms of softening the water, but in ensuring that the water is at true boiling point (as most electric kettles don’t really reach full boil, or at least not all of the water inside does).
I think it’s easy to assume that such a setup is going to be too much bother, but I’ve found it’s really not at all. It’s been totally worth it. Most every tea is more concentrated and alive when brewed with hotter and better water. And while clay kettles produce different results from tetsubins, I’ve come to really like this setup— it does a nice job with the teas I usually drink and is a bit less work to maintain than a tetsubin, not to mention cheaper too.
When I lived in California I relied on bottled water for tea making, as our tap water was extremely hard, with TDS averaging some 350 PPM. Thankfully, the under-the-sink filtration system in our Taipei apartment is quite good, producing water around 70 PPM that brews excellent tea.
This does mean however that when I’m out and about, I don’t know qutie what I’m going to get, and have to factor it into my expectations. At some tea shops, the owners personally collect spring water (this is fairly common in Muzha for instance, where mountainside springs are a short drive away). But at many shops, it’s just tap water, and the experience suffers for it.
Recently I visited a shop that specializes in Tieguanyin from the Muzha/Pinglin area and drank seven of their teas. Every single one was pretty disappointing, and aside from some overall quality concerns, their use of tap water was a major factor. It made every tea thin and overly acidic. Eventually I asked about their water and they got a bit defensive, saying that if they used spring water, their customers would go home and discover the tea didn’t taste as good with their own water, and might come back and complain. Really? I’m not convinced. If they’d brewed the teas with better water, I likely would’ve bought more. Water matters.
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