What Water Is Best For Tea?

"Water is the mother of tea, the teapot is its father, and fire the teacher" – Chinese proverb.

The perfect cup of tea captures all the senses—it will appear bright in colour with good clarity, have abundant fragrance, lasting clear and distinct flavours, and a fully mouth-coating texture. Some teas feel thick and velvety, some have a rounded texture, and some are even honeycomb-like.

  • 02/01/2025
  • 8 minutes
  • blubolt team
What Water Is Best For Tea?

"Water is the mother of tea, the teapot is its father, and fire the teacher" – Chinese proverb.

The perfect cup of tea captures all the senses—it will appear bright in colour with good clarity, have abundant fragrance, lasting clear and distinct flavours, and a fully mouth-coating texture. Some teas feel thick and velvety, some have a rounded texture, and some are even honeycomb-like.

If you're not getting the full sensory experience from your tea—perhaps it sometimes looks cloudy, or the taste falls flat—and you've already made sure your tea leaves are high-quality, single-garden, whole, fresh leaves that have been stored properly (there's more about how to keep your tea fresh here), the next thing to investigate is the water you're preparing them with.

The water you use makes up about 99% of what's in your cup. It, therefore, has a huge impact on your tea's taste and aroma.

Why is water important?

It's simple – the water you're using makes up about 99% of what's in your cup. The composition of the water, for example, whether it's hard or soft or which minerals are present, significantly impacts the taste, aroma and colour of the cup you make.

No one master has had a more significant impact on the understanding of tea making than the ancient Chinese sage Lu Yu, a Tang dynasty scholar who lived from 733 to 804 CE. His monumental work, 'The Classic of Tea,' was the first known study on how to properly infuse tea. This makes it a great place to start when understanding what water to use for tea.

Lu Yu watched the size of the bubbles as his water boiled and realised these bubbles enabled him to find precise temperatures for tea making. 

He realised that using water that was not too hot for green teas would produce more astringency and bitterness in the taste. We looked at the temperature of the water and how that affected the flavour of your tea and made some recommendations for you to try. An easy experiment to do at home is to taste green tea made with boiling water vs made with the recommended 70-80°C water and see how it affects your tea.

In the Classic of Tea, Lu Yu also discovered that water from an underground spring, rather than a crowded local river, made his tea taste better than usual and looked much more straightforward. He noted the best and cleanest spring water flows slowly over granite or stone. This spring water was naturally soft and perfectly balanced in minerals like magnesium, calcium, potassium and sodium. Ultimately, it produced smooth, rich teas with impeccable, precise flavour – the perfect cup.

Unfortunately, it's not realistic for most of us to use our local spring to make tea. However, we can still control the composition of our water. Let's look at what filters and systems are readily available today and see what difference they make.

In his monumental work 'The Classic of Tea,' the ancient Chinese sage Lu Yu emphasises water quality in tea making. He discovered that water from an underground spring, rather than a crowded local river, made his tea taste better than usual.

What makes water bad for tea?

Hard and Soft Water

We're fortunate to have ready access to clean water from our taps in the UK now. Depending on where you are, tap water has a variety of naturally occurring minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium, which Lu Yu realised, when present in the right quantities, can enhance the taste of your tea. Essentially, water is called "Hard" when there are a lot of minerals in it and "Soft" when there are few.

If you use hard water to make tea, you'll likely see cloudiness and might even see a film forming on top of the tea. This comes from too many of the plant compounds in the tea that are attached to the calcium or magnesium minerals in the water and are changing.

If the water you use is too soft, you'll likely get weak or insipid tea. This is essential because there are not enough other minerals for the plant compounds or polyphenols—i.e., the parts of the leaf that give tea its flavour—to attach to, so they will not release their flavour.

The easiest way to get the best water for tea at home is to use a filter.

Chlorine & Organic Compounds

Tiny amounts of chlorine, typically from the cleaning process, and other volatile organic compounds like algae are also present in tap water. Even though the amounts are tiny, water companies work with strict limits to ensure that the levels of such chemicals are safe—they can still affect your cup of tea.

Chlorine can affect the taste of your tea in two ways. Firstly, you can taste the chlorine or get a taste of chlorine afterwards. This will mask some of the lighter or delicate flavours in your tea. Secondly, the chlorine may react with the tea plant compounds, releasing and changing their flavours.

The risk with the organic compounds is that you'll be able to taste or smell them, and once again, the flavours from your tea leaves will be masked or, worse, contaminated.

Activated charcoal sticks are another great option. They bind unwanted chemicals in the water to its surface and loosen any unwanted odours and flavours.

How can I get good water at home?

Short of living next to a clean spring with the correct mix of minerals, the easiest way to get the best water for tea at home is to use a filter. If you live in a very hard water area like London, filtered water protects your kettle from excessive limescale build-up.

Water filter jugs – An accessible option that will suit most applications, these refillable jugs pass your tap water through a filter cartridge. These remove sediment, chlorine, odours and metals from the water.

Finding the right filter is the key to getting your balanced water to work for tea making at home. We've tested many different filters with London water, and our preferred choice is BWT and their range of Soft-Filtered Water.

This BWT filter consistently produced the best cup of tea in a side-by-side taste compared to other filters. Using our Assam Breakfast with milk, Ali Shan and Organic Sencha, we measured appearance by looking at the clarity and brightness of the infusion; aroma and taste by assessing whether the infusion delivered these optimally or whether there were any taints or weaknesses; and texture – looking at whether the tea was mouth coating.

Avoid filters that promise 100% removal of everything—like Epic or Zero. They may be suitable for drinking water, but they were weak and very light when we tested them for tea-making. With no minerals or compounds in the water, the flavour-giving compounds in the tea did not have anything to attach to and share their flavours.

The perfect cup of tea captures all the senses—it will appear clear, bright, and uniform in colour, have abundant fragrance, and have lasting flavour.

Activated Charcoal stick, also known as Binchotan Charcoal.

Activated charcoal sticks have been used in Japan since the 17th century as a simple and sustainable way to filter water. They've since gained popularity all over the world. All you have to do is place the sticks in a jug or water container, and the porous charcoal will bind unwanted chemicals in the water to its surface and reduce any unwanted odours and flavours. The activated charcoal itself is odourless, tasteless, and completely nontoxic.

We included these in our taste test and were very impressed with the results. Water filtered in this way produced full-flavoured, clear tea.

The slight downside is that the stick takes 4-8 hours to filter any water, so you do need to be prepared. However, the significant benefit of the more conventional water filters is their minimum environmental impact. Each stick lasts many months and, when spent, can be simply buried in the garden, where the soil gains nutrients from the charcoal. Water filters are made from plastic and last just a few weeks. For these reasons, it's my preferred choice for filtering my water for tea.

We'd love to know how the water in your area affects your tea – and any tips or tricks you use to get the best cup of tea for your senses. Leave your comments and thoughts below.

Infuse the perfect cup of tea 

  1. Brewesta Kettle 
  2. Two Cup Teaiere 
  3. Tea Timer
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