While tea lovers continue to explore ideas of blending and brewing to enhance the tea-drinking experience, many don’t even think about the most obvious factor to experiment with.

And that is the type of water for brewing tea.

The difference in taste is something is something that is hard to describe with words.

But if you were to try some of the following waters with brewing tea using tea leaves of the same batch, you are going to notice subtle but game-changing differences between them.

1) Filtered water

Filtered water is slowly finding it’s way into more and more households thanks to an ongoing giant and effective marketing campaign run by sellers of filter products.

The concept is basically to use disposable cartridges to remove chlorine and contaminants from water before consumption.

These cartridges are often installed as attachments to faucets and taps. There are even jugs with self-filtering features that do the job.

Premium cartridges can process as much as hundreds of gallons of water before needing replacement.

While more affordable types are usually use activated carbon (activated chacoal).

On the higher tier of such products, the technology they use can range from reverse-osmosis to ultraviolet light to ceramic filters just for the single purpose of purifying water and can even remove biological contaminants.

But in various inner circles of the tea community, filtered water is seen as going a little too far as the main component that we are trying to remove is chlorine.

Moreover too much sieving can mean the removal of chemical constituents of tea that are beneficial to health.

2) Purified water

While filters clean water by removing impurities, purified water add chemicals like iodine, fluoride, and chlorine for cleansing.

But don’t be misled by the word “pure”.

Water in it’s purest form consist of only hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

So the word purified refers more about the process than the end product.

This is why we see them labelled as “purified water” instead of “pure water”

Most of the time the purification process includes the filtered process after adding the chemicals.

3) Distilled water

The purest type of water available to consumers is distilled water.

But this single feature does not mean that it is the best water for tea brewing.

Distilled water is generally produced by heating water to boiling point and capturing the evaporated vapor in a bottle.

This removes all the minerals contained in the water. Making it weirdly tasteless.

This causes a flat tasting tea which distilled water a bad choice for tea if you still intend to savor the flavor of your favorite brew.

The only real advantage of distilled water is that you can have peace of mind that it is safer and cleaner than others, especially tap water.

4) Tap water

While more and more homes have drinkable water straight from the tap, do note that drinkable water just means that the consumption of it has no known negative effects on health, or that the effects are so minute that they are negligible.

While tap water is the most common water of choice, probably out of convenience, the potential problems of it is always down to levels chlorine content and whether the pipes that deliver them into the house is contaminated.

So if you are using tap water for your tea making, let the tap run for a minute before collecting the required water.

This is to remove chlorine and unhealthy compounds that might have accumulated overnight in the piping and faucet.

A natural way of removing chlorine is to let a jug of tap water sit in the kitchen overnight before using it for brewing in the morning.

This allows time for the chlorine contained in it to dissipate.

5) Spring water

Among the many types of bottled water available commercially and to end-consumers, spring water is one of the popular choices.

The thought that you are drinking water straight from the mountains can really sound romantic.

However, do realize that manufacturers don’t hand buckets at the highest waterfalls to collect their spring water for retail shelves.

Spring water comes from underground basins or wells.

I understand that a lot of households depend on well water for their daily essential needs. They don’t just use it for cooking and drinking, but for bathing and laundry as well.

However, I still have reservations about how healthy spring water is. Especially when my bowels became more active than usual the day after I last tried spring water.

I find the taste a little musky probably due to the heavier than usual mineral content.

If you have a spring water source and your digestive system is more than capable of handling them, do give it a try with your favorite loose tea leaves and let me know how much you like it.

However, bottled spring water might be an alternative.

6) Ionized water

Ionized water has had it’s hey days some years ago.

There was a time when every electronics store were promoting water ionizers all over their most valuable retail space.

I can’t conclusively determine if it was a fad or something else.

These days it is more of a niche market… that might still resurrect…

These products basically, or supposedly, raises the pH level of water via an electrolysis process.

To tell you the truth I don’t know the exact science behind it or claim to know.

But I’ve tried it with coffee and tea. And the taste is … meh…

7) Sparkling water

Many patrons have challenged me to try tea brewed with sparkling water even though I suspect that they have never tried it for themselves.

Whether this is the recipe for tea from the fountain of youth or just a joke, I don’t know.

But I have never even contemplated doing it.

Maybe you will after this suggestion. 😀

Which type of water I use for brewing tea?

While I’m a tea drinker who has a pot a day (which I don’t usually finish), I’m not a hardcore enthusiast.

If you put a gun to my head, I’ll have to admit that I’m more of a coffee person rather than a tea person. Even if it’s at a tea convention.

And because I don’t really have the absolute highest expectations to my tea, I use what is most convenient.

And that is water from the tap… that is installed with activated carbon filters.

For me, it is enough to satisfy my tea cravings.

Yet I cannot seem to shake off the idea of how sparkling water might change the game altogether… which is something I will never find out.