Oh Woe is Water

So there I am

I'm sitting down on a Monday morning to have some CYH Zhiwang (2007), a "unicorn piss" tea as one member of the community calls it haha 😆. I prepare my 1960's hongni teapot, preheat the vessel, grab my leaf, and get ready to rock.

But then

Much to my chagrin, the first steep is flat. "No problem" I say, "It will pick up in a couple steeps".

Could I have been more wrong?

The tea is textured, thick, producing an oddly heightened hui gan type sensation on the back rear sides of the mouth but is not sweet. This is not typical hui gan, this isn't hui gan, this is...I don't know what this is! Why does this tea taste like nothing? What on earth??? Why, it's even a bit saline!

What has happened here? Where did this go astray?

This tea is supposed to be a legend! I've had it before! I just traded for a whole half cake!!! This is-

RECORD SCRATCH

...

Oh. - (long pause) - I see.

The water must be off.

Thus birthed another multi-day (at least this time it wasn't multi-month) discussion, frenzy, more discussion, minor depression, low-grade existential crisis, and...

more worries of water; the need to yet again - consider the issue of my water.

This is the result of that day.

So I've been drinking tea now for 5 years.

Let's color that in with some added context:

I've been drinking tea "seriously" for 5 years. It is June of 2025, I began exploring Pu'er in March of 2020. We went home from the office and I knew in my heart this was not going to be a simple 2 week thing, so I sat down to tea threads on reddit, quickly found a server on Discord, and was off to the races.

I had enjoyed loose leaf teas ("real" ones, not blends or western teas other than Earl Gray and such) brewed western style previously.

I have taken multiple breaks during that 5 years, not afraid to say it; some lasting months. I am a somewhat seasonal being and to an extent, took a few small breaks for that reason. I am also a very obsessive being, particularly over things that I find deeply compelling or resonant.

Tea is one of those things, and as such, burnout is always lurking. Testing too many variables at once, diving too deep in one niche of a niche, forgetting to stop and smell the...dancong. Whatever the case, I have taken a couple "major" breaks for that reason.

Two things over this five year period have exhausted my passion enough to reach burnout and take sustained multiple month breaks. One is Pu'er storage. One is water. Both unsurprisingly surrounded semi-aged to aged sheng Pu'er, which is my main category by far.

I have likely done more testing with my water than any of you reading this other than maybe 2-3 specific individuals; I'm fairly confident. If you think you've done more or have a unique perspective, please leave a constructive and in depth comment below to help fill in any gaps in my reasoning and experience. I would welcome your input.

The same probably cannot be said for storage, but I feel it a very safe and sound wager to say I'm in the upper 1/3 of sustained experimenters. Please go read a storage related article and comment on that if you are that person.

Of the two headaches, water has been by far the biggest and most pervasive pain. Storage has consumed more of my attention span, as I mistakenly thought it was the primary issue before, but while significant, has had less overall impact. I probably think about it more because I see it so tangibly every day with the process of going to the pumidor, seeing the hygrometer measurements, and getting some tea out.

Water, however, has been easily the most painful to deal with. Thankfully, it is usually shorter lived and just more intense while battling.

Bad water utterly destroys all enjoyment of all tea across the board with extreme prejudice and very minimal mercy.

If you want to optimize the tea you drink (you western mindset scientist you 😚) - go take a hard. long. look. at your water.

If I were a fightin' man lookin' to start up some good ol' fashioned internet forum drama, I might repeat something along the lines of:

If you know more about anything else pertaining to tea than the water that becomes the entire drink itself, you know nothing, and everything you think you know is folly.

That was a joke, though not to some.

What I would say that I think holds water, is this:

If you have spent significantly less time on evaluating your water than the rest of the tea experience: you are missing possibly half or even more of the entire experience surrounding tea, and likely unintentionally skewing your knowledge base and potentially gathering bad data.

Now, I'll follow that up right away with this:

I'm not a water expert, like sincerely not a water expert, but I've done a lot of water testing. I was very deep in the original pack of folks testing all the water recipes Arby would put out before he started his business; buying and mixing lots of white powders with lots of chemical formulas labeled on tape on the containers. I've drank a fair amount of good tea with good people in different conditions. I've had the pleasure and displeasure of many different waters.

I think very seriously that I know what good tea is. I also agree that there are people with more experience than me that know "good tea" better than me. Even further, I would say there is tea I think is good that is bad or just ok to them and that might call into question my knowledge of good tea.

That is all fine. The same applies to water, and the same applies to most things.

To a degree, this is a subjective topic. In the hubbub of today's water drama, I reached out to multiple people and re-read multiple sources of information; as I usually do. (though I'll be honest...my level of devotion is making me more and more tired over the years 😆)

It is objective in the sense that if you give either just literal zero TDS or something insane like 2000 TDS, terribly mineral balanced water to anyone for brewing almost anything:
- almost all of them will say that was a terrible experience.

It is subjective in the sense that if you give relatively experienced tea drinkers 3-4 generally accepted "good" waters, you will inevitably get at least one person that goes:
- "oh that one? well that one's actual, physical dogshit."

I digress. There is, as with most things, an acceptable range of acceptable water. I would like to posit what I feel is a more interesting and useful argument.

Water is a crucial aspect of your entire tea experience, so much so that I would consider it the most crucial.

It is the cornerstone of your tea. No variable can outperform bad water. Good water can shine through glimmers of hope in even the worst conditions. So-so or ok tea can sing surprisingly better in good water. Better and better tea does the same thing as awful tea without water: it sits and exists as a leaf, with nowhere to disperse it's delightful nature.

I would argue that, to whatever degree the constraints of your system permit, if you're going to optimize anything, spend that energy optimizing the water.

In English: If the most you can do to make your water better is a 7/10, don't settle for anything less.

Now, I realize that target moves. What today might be wonderful water relative to what you've had, might be less than stellar in a few years time; but let me assure you: you will not regret putting in the effort to consider your water.

Lu Yu of course famously said "water is the mother of tea". What he meant was pretty plain: mothers bring life, you cannot create life without a mother. Without water, tea has no life. It is nothing, empty, hollow, devoid of experience, and incapable of creating enjoyment. It's leaves. You could burn them, some smoke them, I don't recommend that. What else do you have to do with them? You spend so much time thinking about them. Maybe you spend all your time thinking about clay and pots, I certainly did. But without tea, what is teaware? And without water, what is tea?

Water is the mother of tea. Now let's pay homage to the valiant grams of YQH YSSL and CYH Zhiwang that were slain this day, rendered entirely undrinkable, drowned in poor water...