Song species Huangzhixiang Dancong Oolong is better to brew tea with soft water or hard water? Why is it good to drink?

Instead of using a panel of experts, a US study used a large group of typical tea consumers to determine the effects of the chemical composition of water on tea making (Franks et al. 2019). The results are basically the same as the previous studies: soft water can extract more catechins, and it has a greater effect on the taste of green tea than black tea. However, unlike other studies, these team members preferred tea brewed in hard water. The author believes that this difference is due to the fact that "the tastes of a small group of Chinese experts are different from those of a large group of American tea consumers." For the American team, the bitterness of green tea brewed in soft water increased, making it less delicious. The researchers continue to suggest that if you drink tea for health reasons, then you should use deionized water, and if you are drinking tea for the taste of tea, then ordinary tap water may be better for most consumers.

In cafes, baristas are most likely to choose the water they use to make coffee, which is either treated by reverse osmosis or filtered with a filter element. However, the traditional method of making tea includes several ways to treat water. Yu Xiuhua suggested adding a pinch of salt to remove the smell from the water, while some tea masters would add stones called "Maifan stone" or bamboo charcoal when making tea. These methods are often claimed to "purify" water, but in fact they may subtly change the mineral content of the tea, thus changing the taste of the tea. Although we have not found any peer-reviewed research in this area, tea writer Rie Tulali (2020) speculates that in many of these treatments, the common element may be silica. Toulali points out that high silicon water like Fiji improves the taste and aftertaste of tea, and bamboo is a well-known source of silicon. However, until we do more research on this issue, we are not sure whether silica is a mineral missing in the perfect tea formula. However, different studies do clearly show that minerals in water have different effects on different types of tea. For this reason, many tea experts recommend using softer water in white and green teas than oolong and black teas to produce the desired flavor of that kind of tea. For a strong cup of tea, you might even consider following Mrs. Beaton's advice, she wrote, "adding a few grains of sodium bicarbonate before boiling water is poured on the tea will help absorb the essence of the tea." However, for more refined teas that are popular in specialty coffee shops, you may find some new flavors instead of the water used to make coffee.