Tea with Reverse Osmosis

Both your curiosity and the difference in taste are totally understandable.

I read somewhere that scum in tea is indicative of more calcium.

Since chlorine dissipates when water is left standing (recommended for fish and plants), I expect boiling releases chlorine from the water so it's not comparable to drinking tap water straight.

A change in water will do that especially when the water overpowers the tea.

I'd go with the filtered water to let more of the tea's nuances through, but since they're your taste buds, you're better off using whichever water suits your taste, not someone else's. Personally, I don't like the taste of my local water and use filtered or bottled distilled water for cooking and drinking as well as for my tea.

My cat, OTOH, doesn't seem to care whether her drinking water is tap, filtered, or sitting on the stove leftover from cooking pasta :(.

filtered = purified

You know what I meant, right?

RO water wins hands-down in my taste tests.

We have a RO system installed and I take the water with me to work (to brew my morning cup of tea). The local tap water at work is hard and produces horrible tasting tea (and coffee).

As I recall (and please correct me if I am wrong), these systems do not actually purify water, they just replace one kind of ion with another kind. So your water is still just as impure, only in a less problematic way.

This means the water that comes out of the machine is as soft as the water going in was hard. The harder the input, the softer the output.

If your original water contains iron, which makes tea really nasty, anything you can do to it will be a huge help.

--scott

I suggest trying tea made with bottled water rather than tap or even 'cleansed' tap water. It's more expensive certainly but even the cheapest bottled will do, and be superior to any type of tap water (as long as it's not like Pepsico's 'Dasani' water which is made from local cleansed tap water -- use mountain spring water).

For a real treat try 'Fiji' water which is about the softest water you can find.. feels like velvet in your mouth.

When I was in Ireland this summer the tap water was so horrible that I always had to use bottled water to drink and for teamaking. Just get a big

Thanks for all the responses =). I tried a couple of more times, and I think I like tea better with purified water than just plain tap water

-- even if it lacks almost any minerals. As I said, I don't want to continue to buy bottled water after my familly has installed this system -- it's a waste of money. I'll try different things out, like seeing if the tea tastes better with virtually mineral-less water or if a splash of regular tap water will improve the taste. Thanks!

I second you suggestion. When I was on hiatus in the US for 6 months, I brewed my tea using "spring" water in the jugs you can get at the grocery store. Keep in mind that some brands are better than others, but I got much better tasting tea than when I tried to use tap water.

What you are describing is water softening, an ion exchange process.

RO, however, is a process in which water is forced through a semi-permeable membrane, thereby removing contaminants that won't fit through the membrane. It is water purification.

- -- Anthony remove x's to reply

I have to add, the nerd that I am, that the ion exchange processes I've seen are much better than what was described in the post above. Some can replace negative ions with OH- and positive ions with H+, leaving, if you do the math on that, H2O--aka water.