Fiji Bottled Water New Ad Campaign

I tried it just now and there is a clear difference. There's many factors that can be at hand here.. As I mentioned before, spicy and salty food makes it hard to appreciate taste of light teas and water. Once my friend tried filtering NYC tap water through a paper towel - after 1gal bottle was filled, there was a black/rust coloured stain on the towel. When I kept tap water in a bottle in the fridge for a few hours, there was quite a bit of sediment on the bottom, and it didn't look like mineral sediment, it looked like some grayish flakes. Sometimes, every once in a few months, the water here is not clear but brown, like weak tea.

Bottled water is not all the same. Some of it comes from tap, too. If they compared tap water from faucet to tap water from bottles, no wonder they could not tell the difference (although bottled tap water should be filtered..). They sell water in cloudy-plastic bottles that has a very strong plastic aftertaste - even much worse than tap water. And yet people keep buying them. If these same people were involved in the blind tests than I'm not surprised at the result.

As far as I understand it's a common advice here to filter tap water for tea. Is that wrong, then? How many people here use plain tap to make tea?

I use filtered NYC tap at home.

/Lew

My water comes from an aquifer 500 feet below me. My tea kettle looks like the Grand Canyon. When I change out the batteries on the smoke detectors I clean out the faucets and washing machine filters. I've gotten use to the mineral taste and when I drink other water I find it odd tasting. People say my water taste better than theirs.

Jim

Lewis Per>

Hey and Hi,

I use NYC tap water too. It tastes just fine, and brews tea well for the most part. Water taste, as we all know, is, to a very large degree, a matter of what we're used to. But, there is a strong concensus that NYC water, which comes from reservoirs upstate, is clean and healthy.

On a recent trip to central Washington State, I drank tap water from an aquifer. It tasted excellent, and brewed tea better than NYC tap does. The story of my flight back, and why and how I failed to arrive here in NYC with a bottle of said water, is a story for another day. I will say that the WA water was not minerally, but very well adapted to tea brewing.

An experiment recently conducted at The Tea Gallery -- you might remember that place frm previous discussion -- placed two waters side by side, one NYC tap, filtered and stored for some few days in a very large ceramic basin, and the other newly drawn and filtered NYC tap. The former was noticably sweeter, less sharp, and brewed tea nicely. The results of blind (semi-blind) tastings were universal: Everyone reported the same thing, to one degree or another. I replicated the experiment at home and came up with similar results, even though my ceramic bowl was small by comparison (perhaps holding two quarts).

And that's my contribution to the water discussion.

Michael

This is really interesting. But I wonder how much of the effect is the ceramic and how much is that the water was allowed to breathe the salubrious NYC air for a few days? Maybe a plastic basin would work as well?

I'm not joking, except for praising NYC air...

/Lew

Well yes, I realize you are not joking. The issues you raise did come up. The next step is to store water in various types of vessels to ascertain differences. It's OK to try this trick at home. Michael

I'd guess that was a result of the chlorine coming out of the stored water. We have really good tap water too but it is no comparison when I go to a local spring coming straight out of a mountain side near my home. I've found that a good triple or quad filter on my tap gets it very close to the spring water though.

And that's my contribution to your contribution to the water discussion.

- Dominic PS I'm back, and crazily jet-lagged :)

He said both samples were filtered, though.

/Lew

Yes, but there is chlorine and there is also chloramine which is often used (chlorine and ammonia so it is more stable and doesn't aerate out of treated water quickly) Most tap filters remove most of the *taste* of chlorine but not all of the actual chlorine, so filtering and then letting it sit will always remove more of it than just filtering or just sitting. If it is treated with cholramine then tap filters do less of a job of removing it.

Tap/pitcher/etc. filters are also highly variable in quality to begin with and then you add on to it the flow rate, when it was last changed, and on and on... so filtering often is doing less than most would like to think. I'm not a scientist (don't even play one in my free time) so anyone is free to disagree/challenge/agree with me, I'm just going on my basic understanding and experience.

I'm lucky to have grown up in a fairly remote area of PA where there were tons of well maintained natural springs and now in an area with a few still and the water from them is amazing. Often "sweet" and probably has pretty good mineral content which makes amazing tea. That is what I compare to and even with a fairly high-end tap filter and then into a filtered pitcher I still prefer to let my water sit for a bit before using and get good results.

- Dominic

Thanks for the info. I wonder if anyone has reliable numbers on filtration of chloramine and how fast it'll dissipate in water. A little Googling found a site that said chloramine in water basically won't dissipate at all, but it was definitely an anti-chloramine advocacy site.

Right, the details matter with filtering (and water in general.)

/Lew

Yeah I could have better explained myself in my first reply, sorry... I blame it on the jet lag ;) I'm no expert on chloramine, the only reason I even knew of it is because I've heard a bunch of warnings for aquarium water if you live somewhere that does use it. It is used in large cities, so NYC may use it. I'm sure it will leech out eventually but how long, I have no clue. I'd say normal chlorine can be noticeably dissipated in anywhere from a couple hours to a day especially if it is poured vigorously initially or aerated in some way. I fill my pond by keeping the hose way up high and letting it hit hard so that it aerates as it fills instead of laying the hose in and letting it fill.

From what I've seen as far as making aquarium water safe is chlorine tap water needs 1-2 days, and chloramine needs a week. Again, how true or scientific this is I have no idea. And aeration speeds it up, so in theory simply boiling the water and letting it boil a short while would also eliminate chlorine.

- Dominic