Tea Curious Autumn - Water Review

Brandon Kendall

15 Sep 2025 — 8 min read

A cozy cup of YangQingHao Yuanshi Senlin w/ Tea Curious Autumn Water

My server friend Qwasx, or 'qwaz', says this blog isn't really tea and clay but more just water and water.

He's sort of right. But I am truly hoping and intending to get that remedied here very shortly.

While it may seem silly, fanatic, or over-the-top to have emphasized water so much (and to some extent, that's fair); I would offer this:

I've learned a whole lot this last 2 months alone.
I've personally enjoyed the journey recently and not minded treating tea as a side thing while exploring other hobbies like pipe tobacco and reading more.

I think it's really all balanced out; and while I desire to have a blog approaching the scale of influence the server has had: I realize that's unlikely, far away, and probably not realistic.

Either way: I'm here for tea, I'm here for me, and most importantly: I'm here for you 😄

So, without further ado, let's get into a very short update about where I've been and what I've been doing the last couple months without posts; and what I think of TeaCurious Autumn 🍂 droppers.

So since I wrote this entry on August 5th...

...I've been really just exploring pipe and reading while having a few tea sessions a week. Of course I've still been on the server, if a bit less; I consider it a permanent fixture of my life and one of the core expressions of my lifelong passion of tea so I never truly duck out without keeping an eye on it.

I was going to do a couple other articles, one of which was a Brita vs Pur filter battle and make it a fun little mini-series, but I elected not to...for now. I may still, you can let me know if that's of interest 😉

For now though, I'll share the little graphic cause I found it funny and was excited to use it.

A Brita water filter fights a Pur water filter - cartoon — *A violent, no-holds, barred cage match between a Brita filter and Pur filter; faucet-mount-system fight nights; circa June 2025.*

I will say, I've been enjoying not treating tea as a catch-all-kill-all hobby like I have in the past. After having a couple discussions with Rie of Tea Curious (wonderful person by the way, link to her business below), I've learned we are kindred spirits in the 'water woes' of high TDS terrible tap (try saying that 3 times fast).

At one point in this most recent conversation she even said the word 'feral' to describe the period of time when they were testing water solutions trying to have good tea in their household with nothing but bad water all around.

She, like Arby, like TeaSecrets, likely others, and like myself - have all shared a common bond:

Our water is simply not on our side, has never been, and may never be.

Some folks have the luxury of their city having some of the best taps and most delicious natural waters available in the country. We just don't. So we've set out on this journey; separately...but, in way: very much together, we just didn't know we were on the same path at the same time 😄

I have been drinking tea with exclusively Tea Curious Autumn water this month. It's pretty slick as a system for water creation goes.

(my friends always laugh when I say I'm creating water for tea, as if I can summon it out of thin air 😆)

All you do is fill up a kettle (1 liter) and dropper in 1ml or .5ml or whatever you want from each of 2 bottles, one for hardness and one for alkalinity, and you're off to the races - stir, boil, brew. 🍵

After a few weeks of fully dedicating tea to Autumn water, I have reached some conclusions, thought of a couple questions, and formulated some opinions.

The Review

It is nice to drink tea again. Let's start there.

After the kettle stone issues (not entirely the fault of the stones...don't worry about that for now), the glitches I had with Empirical Water, and the home RO/DI setup: I went back to Empirical Glacial as my baseline water.

This...worked, sort of, but from a fully truly zero (and I mean zero) base water - Empirical Glacial began performing differently than I remembered. Not egregiously so, but enough so that I paused and went...'huh, that's interesting'.

I could've probably just sat there and been content. However, in my very regular conversations with Wooju (Seo) recently, we've been discussing the need to try different waters on the softer side of the spectrum. I wanted (and still do want) to get an appreciation for different mineral balances and ratios, particularly on the intentionally lower side of the TDS spectrum, maxing out at top concentration around say, even 70.

So what did I do? That's right, I went to the hardest possible option Rie had on offer when I decided to give Tea Curious a shot 😉

So, after a few solid weeks of testing with that water (Autumn)...

I've landed on some things. Let's begin with the questions:

Does perhaps (however nuanced and subtle) the official Tea Curious recommendation to use store-bought purified water as the base have a significantly different effect than my home RO/DI setup netting a true zero base water; therefore skewing the results and/or masking the intended 'feel' of the water's profile for brewing tea?
Why do people gravitate so 'overwhelmingly' (Rie's words) toward Autumn for sheng? (particularly of the semi-aged and older category)

Moving to the conclusions on the water:

Tea Curious Autumn water is unapologetic in its inoffensive, rounded, almost blunted nature.

I mean this in a neutral way, not good, not bad, intending to be strictly observational albeit with a twinge of my own biases likely present. I am not making a value judgment yet, I'll do that below.

What does Tea Curious Autumn water do to tea?

Simply put, it dulls tea like a blunt instrument, not a precise or surgical ratio balancer. If you put a tea that you know exceptionally well in Autumn, you will likely find the following occurs:

All top notes, high notes, upper register profiles, etc, will be fully suppressed.
Storage aromas (such as those on older sheng) may also be partially suppressed.
The middle register of a tea's profile should be present, but may be very one dimensional.
Base notes will still be good and loud, but again, you may find them lacking depth or nuance.
Depending on how you use Autumn, you will likely experience varying degrees of abrasiveness, astringency, and muting.

How did I use Autumn?

I found the instructions of 1ml each of hardness and alkalinity to be absolutely insanely rough. That's just me, but if you're reading this, my guess would be just based on your being on this blog that you might find more preference in what I did.

After just a couple teas with Autumn at 1ml, I immediately took the advice on the website to try it at .5ml each, a half dose, as it was far too potent for me. Frankly, I would not recommend anyone to use the 1ml each dosage.
Just as the instructions said, I filled a kettle (with home zero RO/DI, not purified) and dropped in the concentrates, gave it a stir, and boiled.
- This was extremely convenient and very desirable, particularly for testing and dialing in rather than committing to huge batches of water at a time.
I drank various sheng and a little oolong, all in the semi-aged to aged and darker type categories. I figure I ought dial in a water on what I know best and what I prefer most.
- That said, if these effects were present at this category, they will be further exacerbated in lighter and younger categories.
I found each week, using slightly less leaf and slightly shorter steeps yielded more desirable results.

My subjective opinions on Tea Curious Autumn

So, I think you use Autumn when you want tea that isn't bad, but you're willing to not be wowed. I also think you use Autumn (as Rie has said) when you have company that is accustomed to harder water and/or prefers it, and/or doesn't want to focus on the tea and just wants to focus on conversation and the tea is more of an afterthought or something hot to drink during the visit.

The benefits of Autumn are

Extreme ease of use (as with all Tea Curious offerings)
Flexibility of doing per-kettle batches / experiments (huge)
Cost efficiency (.70 c/kettle (liter), $2.65/gal...very, very reasonable)

I'll throw this in here too: While it is rounding, muting, and suppressing in some ways,

It is predictable, simple, and straightforward. If you keep your leaf ratio and heavy-handed brewing in check, you'll seldom yield 'bad' tea.

You just won't be writing any tasting notes or reviews with it. Far too much nuance and 'true character' of the leaf is removed / suppressed.

This is very much not a bad thing, this is just not my thing.

As such, on deck for next article is likely a review of Tea Curious Original, followed eventually by Springtide.

But I promised Qwas I'm going to get actual tea and clay specific articles up post-haste, so I'll get right on that as soon as I can 😂

If you'd like to try your hand at some Tea Curious water, you can grab some here:

If you're looking for another good read on water, this one by Rie about polyphenols and how Tea Curious waters have different effects is a very great and short read as well: