Water Quality in Tea Brewing

Series Summary

Tea is characterized as the most mystical and healing of all the beverages. With the variety of flavors, tea seems to perfect drink for any occasion. As Chinese legend describes, tea originated by divine intervention. A legendary emperor was sitting in the grass sometime around 2737 B.C. As he was pondering life, he drank a bowl of boiling water when all of a sudden leaves blew into his bowl. When he looked down, he noticed that the water had started to change color. The ever inquisitive and curious monarch took a sip of the brew and was pleasantly surprised by its flavor and its restorative properties. However, due to the desire that tea arouses, one creation myth can not possibly be enough to explain the beginnings of tea. Another legend claims that the founder of the Zen school of Buddhism discovered the beverage. Regardless of truth to these myths, tea has played a significant role in Asian culture for centuries as a staple beverage, a curative and a symbol of status.

In this free video series, learn how to brew tea. Our expert, Matt Graham, starts every morning with a fresh cup of tea. He shows you everything you need to know to brew tea. Get tips for using different equipment to brew tea. Learn how to use an infusing ball, teapot, French press, and more! If you are curious how much water to use, Matt shows you this as well. So, what are you waiting for? Learn how to brew tea today!

Video Transcript

"Obviously if you are going to make a great cup of tea one of the first things you are going to need is water. I recommend using the best water that you can find and maybe you have a filtration system in your house or maybe you are using bottle water. Those are both great options you can also buy one of these filtered pitchers and that will purify your tap water and get it to a higher quality. Cause what you really want to taste is the tea and all the good things that you extracted from your tea leaves while you were steeping. You don't want to taste impurities in your water and you are obviously drinking tea partly cause it's a healthy drink. So why not start with water if it's going to be healthy for you and in addition to some method of purifying the water you are also going to need a way to boil water. That is what a tea kettle is for and it is real simple tea kettle it has a little finger trigger right there that opens it so I can pour it. It also has a whistle on it so that let's you know when your water is boiling and there are other ways you can boil your water. I have just a microwave safe little pitcher and this is great cause you can measure how much water you need for a 1 cup, 2 cups, 3 cups of tea. It's perfectly safe to put your purified water in here and boil it in your microwave, it's going to take about the same amount of time that it takes to boil it on the stove top. A third option if you are really getting into tea is they have pitchers that plug into the wall and it's specifically made for boiling water for tea. You can plug it in turn it on and it boils out water, there is also specialty water boilers that bring the water to an exact temperature for steeping tea and then dispense it and of course that is also a more expensive but an option that you have available to you."