Tea Curious Original - Water Review

I was asked to submit the Original Recipe water review by a reader, should've had it out quite a bit sooner but let's just look at it this way: At least now I've got a ton of experience with it!

I've been using Tea Curious Original droppers (1ml each) into a kettle of my home 5-stage, dual deionizer RO/DI filter setup. True zero water, as zero as zero gets at home and not in a lab. I've been doing this combination of pure base (from which I assessed the Autumn recipe as well) and Tea Curious Original for about 4-6 months depending on how you look at it.

I am fully a Tea Curious Original advocate at present.

The Review

I won't spend too much time going over Autumn cause at some point I'll try Spring as well for my Japanese greens and such and do a triple threat review summarizing all three. For now, just know that Autumn was harder, much harder. Very very rounding and 'average making' (not necessarily a bad thing, bad to me, but...more of a flattener than a tuner). Autumn is the recipe I think people go to when they want flat, simple, not bad, not great - tea.

Original does none of that, and is actually the one I'd call more like a "truth serum" (not to compare too much to Arby's old recipe, bit different). Original gives you what the tea wants to give you and does not hide any of it. It will show you it's bitterness if it has it, it will show it's top notes and delicate florals, it will show you it's basey, round, earthy underneath...it'll show it all.

Original is a softer water, but not only softer (tho not as soft as Spring); it is a mineral ratio that unlocks the intended character of the leaf...by the leaf. This water doesn't do anything to your tea other than help it shine.

If it's bad, it'll be bad. If it's good, it'll be good. It won't hide or deceive or manipulate your tea around. That's by default, to me, a good thing. To others, there is justification IMO to not want that.

Many moons ago, and often in modern day as well, our friends in the East would use intentionally muting clay on rougher teas to make them more drinkable. Generally speaking, this is simply a cost efficiency thing, tho it need not always be.

I think we need to leave a lot more room for preference in the realm of 'correct' than many of us do, in many areas of life.

The ease of using the dropper system

It's a piece of cake. Like...elegant cake.

Dropper 1ml each vial into a 1L kettle of your base water when you're ready to have /continue a tea session. Boil. Go.

When you need to refill, carefully add the powder mineral packets, get the most base-zero-base water you can, slap the empty, rinsed out vials on a scale, set it to ml and zero that bad boi out and fill er' up to 50ml.

What does Tea Curious Original water do to tea?

Original is a great water, and one I have found a strong affinity for. Basically everything is present so you can clearly, confidently, and cleanly evaluate a tea.
You can expect the following in your cup:

• Top notes, high notes, and upper register profiles are present.
• Storage aromas (such as those on older sheng) are present.
• The middle register of a tea's profile is present.
• Base notes and bottom end elements will be present.
• Abrasiveness, astringency, bitterness, and other 'negative' aspects of a given tea will be present, but only to the degree the leaf actually holds.

A note on Empirical Water

As many of you know, I have used Empirical Water for a very, very long time relative to the time I have been on my gongfucha journey. Arby is a lifelong friend and a straight up ninja with water. Between him and Tea Secrets, I've had some pretty stellar mentors and guides in understanding water as it pertains to tea.

While I faithfully used Arby's original recipes, blending mineral myself - then moved to Empirical Water concentrates as he particularized the business - and still use them today,

I found over time that the more I learned about good tea and good water, particularly around the inferior base waters we have in Pittsburgh and the amount that skews things: Glacial and Spring have a tendency to, due to the mineral profile (ratios), accentuate a very particular 'wavelength' if you will in the middle-register of notes sort of...across the board.

For the longest time, I was pounding YQH like it was going out of style. If you know anything about YQH, you'll know the storage aroma is sort of the most polarizing part of it, you either love it or you hate it. Many will argue that the storage aroma of a tea shouldn't be tasted and good storage should mature the tea in a certain way but not show up as a distinct house note. This is preference to me, of which, in YQH land - I obviously quite like.

All this in mind, however, Empirical Water is our coffee water of choice. But not for tea right now. Some teas respond well to Empirical while others don't and it's just too much variance and a bit too polarizing on the teas themselves for an honest assessment in my experience.

Both the Glacial and Spring concentrates are fantastic in what they do to coffee, and even the haters from the tea world have had to ascent to the superior quality coffee that anything Arby touches churns out. That's indisputable, my own bias aside. Just read the world champion testimonials.

Anyway, I wanted to ensure I paid homage to Arby and make it clear that, while I no longer use his water for tea: it is the only water we use for coffee, which my wife does quite a bit of.

My subjective opinion on Tea Curious Original

This is the water to go with, and it's been the recommended water in my footers on all articles for a while now, and for a long while I expect it to be.

Get yourself a good base. Rie says you can snag purified from the store.
Better yet, go for RO; purified will have variance and not start at a truly clean base.
Better than RO, opt for a Zerowater filter and get it down even more, RO can be up to 8-12 TDS at times in high concentration / dirty systems and you never know the level of deep cleaning they do on store systems.
Better yet...

...just pull the trigger on a home setup and get an Everpure, Apec, Berkey, or other top line RO/DI filter system. You'll get as zero as zero can get on as many fronts as is reasonably attainable.

If you want a low lift way to get daed honest tea, Tea Curious Original is the way to go. For those of you that know how much agonizing I've done over water the last several years, consider the following statement:

Of all the waters I've used, Tea Curious Original is among the best, if not the best - for the most balanced cup without a perfect natural mineral water like the ones it's modeled after. If I don't have good water, my good teas aren't getting brewed.

I wholeheartedly and without any reservations endorse Tea Curious Original water for even the highest caliber and most expensive teas.