Russian bottled water for tea

I have water quality test strips for my aquarium, and they always hit their expiration date long before i've used all of them, so i went ahead and ran some tests.

I only tested five or six bottled waters. They ranged in ph from about

Settled on one that fell around 7. Arrowhead is the brand name on it, fwiw. I have no idea how widely available that is.

I found that the very acid, very soft water made tea that was excessively tannic and quite pale. The very basic, very hard water made tea that tasted a little weak, though quite drinkable, and coated my glassware with light brown crud. And built up pearly white scale pretty quickly in the kettle - so I'm guessing the hardness was mainly calcium. (Magnesium is the other primary mineral in water hardness, makes the scale yellowish)

The Chinese say that the water for tea should not be taken too close to the source of the brook where its too much yan, no too far downstream where its too much yin. To a geochemist like me that translates to neutral pH and not too soft. While working as a field geologist in high mountain ranges I noticed that the water from brooks that originates from glaciers gains some mineral content right at the tip of the ice tongue which tells me that the majority of the water volume comes from underground morena much higher upslope where it has a good chance to gain mineral content. That explains how the glacier streams water never tastes dull as water melted from the ice itself. The best tea water is glacier stream water taken about a mile downstream if the slope is still steep and the water runs fast or 100-200 yards if it slows down considerably. As soon as the stream bed stones gain even a little algae the quality of the water quickly gets lower.

Or so it seem.

Sasha.

Do you have a URL for the English version?

/Lew

Sasha.