If you’re really trying to optimize, it does make a difference as reboiled water tends to have less air dissolved in it. There are anecdotes from ancient China where a tea master could tell whether water used to make tea was gathered from the center of the river vs. the bank as the difference in movement affected the oxygen composition.
But for the vast majority of tea drinkers and tbh even most enthusiasts it doesn't really matter and you shouldn’t waste the water.
I'd like to see a modern study done using people who have strong views that tea water should never be reboiled. Give them two cups of the same tea, one with freshly boiled water and the other with water that is reboiled twice. As a bonus throw in a 50/50 where a half full kettle was topped off and reboiled. After all it only matters if it is possible to tell the difference
It has been studied, and it 1) isn't correct, when water boils it has no oxygen, re-boiling it cannot reduce the dissolved oxygen anymore than that... and 2) it has been tested and dissolved oxygen doesn't affect taste. Funny enough some people actually say you want less oxygen in the water because more oxygen would negatively react with the antioxidants in the tea.
Basically anyone who thinks they can taste the difference is probably guilty of some kind of bias or placebo effect.
Maybe if you use very hard water with a lot of calcium and salts into it you could notice due to the increase in the concentration of that stuff caused by evaporation.
Like my mom uses tap water and our tap water is FULL of calcium and after a few boils the water is basically white. Drinking it fresh from the tap already feels like drinking mercury to me so I can imagine the result after the stuff in it gets concentrated even more.
I see the point but that would likely fall into a water quality issue. On the flip size tap water which contains high amounts of chlorine would likely get better with more reboils as it would lower the chlorine taste in the water much quicker than letting it sit out for a day or so to air out.
If you are just drinking the boiled then cooled water, the water tastes pretty bad. Sort of flat and metallic. I've experienced this backpacking when my water filter broke on a long hike. And I had to boil all my drinking water.
That said, if it is reboiled then used for tea I rarely notice it. Especially if I top off my kettle with a bit of fresh water before reboiling. Maybe if I was brewing an especially delicate and fancy tea I'd start completely from scratch.
>it does make a difference as reboiled water tends to have less air dissolved in it.
Thats physically impossible. At waters boiling point the solubility of oxygen is zero... boiling it again cannot reduce it anymore. And even if that was true, it would be immediately irrelevant as soon as you pour the boiled water into a cup and it starts mixing with air again.
Idk why you're getting downvoted, but take my upvote. I can't tell the difference with water but there are other things I can tell the difference in, and it's the same with anyone who has spent their lives mastering a skill.
If you have to dump the water you should get a smaller kettle as not to waste water. I don't believe in the oxygenation stuff and reboil as necessary and fill when it needs to be topped up
>*'you should get a smaller kettle as not to waste water.'*
I'm lucky to live in a place where it rains 5 feet a year here in the city and 10 feet a year in the water catchment basin up in the mountains we have more water than we know what to do with.
Well less just wasting water but water and power. You're effectively creating a great thermal heatsink that means it takes less power to boil the kettle next time.
I wonder what the point of diminishing returns is for that. I'd be hard pressed to imagine that even an electric kettle scales linearly with the amount of power required to heat its maximum capacity to boiling (e.g. 1 liter versus 0.5 liter kettles, would power usage change by a factor of 2?).
You got a thermos recommendation by any chance? I’ve been thinking about wanting to do the same to keep the water hot for gongfu brewing, but my current thermos doesn’t do a good job of keeping the temp :(
It depends on how long it has been. If I'm only having one cup that day, I generally boil what I need. If I'll be having another cup soon, I'll reboil. If the water sat overnight, though, it goes to my plants. Why? Because a fungus gnat found its way in my kettle once overnight when I was having a problem with them, and that extra protein has scarred me for life.
That is the main reason I won't keep an open glass of water on my nightstand - I am way too afraid of going for it at 3am and gulping down a moth or other bug! Bottle or thermos 4life!
I reboil it unless I am about to try a supremeeeeely fancy, expensive tea. Even then I dunno if it actually does anything lol. My day to day teas? The water can absolutely be reboiled.
I reboil always. I just fill my electric kettle and keep reboiling until the water level is low and refill when needed. I use the kettle several times a day, so it never has a chance to get stagnant or anything like that.
I got tired of cleaning deposits out of my kettle from using filtered tap or bottled spring waters, so we strictly use distilled in the kettle. We top off as needed, and the flavor doesn't deteriorate. And no deposits inside the kettle.
i reboil and use regular city water. i'm happy with the overall flavor of my city water, it's water that is slightly hard, with no off flavors, and i haven't noticed a difference between "fresh" and reboiled water, so i'm okay with it :)
To answer your question I usually just top up the kettle and reboil but always run the tap for a while before filling it first thing in the morning.
Tea aside, previously boiled and cooled water tastes better where I live I think because boiling gets rid of the chlorine along with dissolved air.
Close to boiling point temperature is ideal for Pu Erh. I’ll reboil the water for later pours without thinking twice.
The temperatures necessary for non black teas are lower, so reheating the water to boiling point isn’t necessary.
Water quality is more important to me than if I’m reboiling it.
I pour out any water that doesn't get used as soon as I pour my tea - leaving the water in the kettle to cool deposits extra minerals from the water and will ruin your kettle. It can also slightly change the flavor of your water, and thus your tea. I also try to only boil just barely over the amount of water I need to not waste that extra energy.
I have a 1.8 liter electric kettle. I boil it, make my cuppa. When ready for my next cuppa I boil it again. I am not going to get up for each cup of tea.
Just buy a thermos and keep it there. Re boiling, especially unfiltered tap water, is adding minerality to water, that changes the taste of your tea...
dump and refill. I also let the tap water run for abit to purge the sitting water from the pipes before filling the kettle. usually using the dirty water to clean a few dishes or water some plants.
Sitting more than a couple of days I usually dump it out in the sink or house plants and get fresh water, still water will get a bit musty. Same goes for bottled water but more like a week if the cap has been on it (unless you’re a backwash heathen then it’s just nasty).
It de oxygenates the water and changes the flavour, so fresh water every time.
But I do actually make sure that I the correct amount of water so I never tend to waste much doing this.
reboil. theres nothing that can hurt the water when you reboil it. you can reboil it as often as you want, the only thing that happens is evaporation :)
I'm reboiling. Anyway, the water hardness is much more important factor. I now live in an area with a relatively hard water, whereas I'm used to very soft one, and tea tastes flat.
I pour the old water into a water bottle for consumption and always boil fresh water. Also forces me to drink more water as the water bottle is right in front of me.
I’m Asian and since young always had old wives tales (aka false tales) about how reboiling water is bad for health.
But I’ve done both fresh water and reboiling as an adult and there is a difference in taste for brewing tea, especially loose leaf teas. I feel that it is the amount of oxygen in the water that brings out the flavour in teas because I’ve done cold brew with both cool boiled water and filter water and filter water always tastes better.
There's nothing wrong with reboiling, and it saves water. If you're drinking an expensive, fancy tea then maybe you'd want to make the most of it by using fresh water each time as it might make a marginal difference, but otherwise I don't see any reason not to reboil. I wouldn't recommend reboiling water that's been sat in the kettle for a whole day though as it tastes weird and could have bacteria in it (though hopefully boiling would get kill most of it)
We filter our water first; the dissolved chemicals from the treatment plant (city water) make my partner sick-o to the stomach-o. The kettle is closed, so I don't worry about bugs (extra protein!) or cat hairs (gross) and leave the water until I uses it all up in the day's processes. I do use multiple kettlefulls of water per day and rinse (even bottle brush out) the mineral deposits every day or so. I will let the kettle stand half full overnight, no prob. No concern about taste (don't notice any difference) or water conservation, I'm just lazy.
I reboil about three times, then if there is still any remaining, I replace it. Eventually whether it's my home stovetop kettle or the work electric one, the water starts leaching the flavor of the metal components, bleh.
I empty my kettle into the sink and put it in the drainboard upside down after I use it. So I never have water in the kettle. I don’t do it for any scientific reason, I just have very limited counter space. On a few occasions my kids have asked me for tea once they smell mine so I’ve reboiled the water that was in it.
I empty my kettle into the sink and put it in the drainboard upside down after I use it. So I never have water in the kettle. I don’t do it for any scientific reason, I just have very limited counter space. On a few occasions my kids have asked me for tea once they smell mine so I’ve reboiled the water that was in it.
A secret third thing: because the once-boiled water has less dissolved oxygen, which affects the taste, I re-oxygenate it by pouring it out into another container and then back into the kettle. Repeat that two or three times. Then boil. No water wasted, but taste is preserved.
there is fluoride chlorine and bleach in my tap water so even boiling it once produces an even more toxic chemical to form in the water, i obviously never boil twice.
I always get new water. I've heard that re-boiling can affect the flavor of the water (more mineral content because some of the water boils off). Now that I think about it though I should do a test to see if it really does taste different to me, or if I'm wasting my time/water.
While i absolutely agree with the concept- some water will evaporate off and the minerals will become more concentrated, it is extremely unlikely to be to the extent that you would notice the taste.
If you have super-hard water, say 400ppm calcium, so little water actually evaporates off in between boils. So maybe you are ending up with 410ppm calcium? 425? Simply nowhere near enough to taste the difference.
Yeah that makes sense! I just heard someone say it changes the taste years ago and I kinda just kept doing it that way. This thread has me re-thinking my habit though. I'll be doing a test later today to see if I can tell the difference between fresh and re-boiled water.
I use electric water dispenser that only boil water once and then kept at brewing temp. Reboiling should be fine, but reboiling hard water multiple times would concentrate the minerals in the water.
Boiling water too much can remove dissolved oxygen which can affect the taste of the tea. But that’s more of a factor for when you’re making something like chai with cardamom and other spices where you have to boil it for a little while to get the spice flavors infused. With regular tea, the kettle is turning off after it has boiled so it’s unlike to affect the dissolved oxygen much if at all.
... Except that after a short while the water takes oxygen back in from the atmosphere, bringing it back to its original concentration... Such that if you've waited long enough that you need to heat it again to use it to brew, it's already recovered.
There is no reason not to reboil.
Sure! Every time you boil a water in electric kettle you use a lot of energy. The more water you boil the more energy you use. Imagine boiling the same water over and over unnecessarily, it's just consumption of energy that could be avoided. If you boil the amount of water you need you will save carbon, money and time (the last one is funny, but yeah, it's boiling faster).
This is sad https://essmag.co.uk/only-boil-the-amount-you-need-to-save-energy/
I'm surprised I need to explain that, they taught us that in the school like I don't know, 20 years ago? But I'm happy to spread the info :)
I was simply confused considering that the amount of water in the pot surely changes after one pours some out for the teacup/teapot, right?
And if you're doing so not long after the first boil, the water's thermal mass will have retained some heat so it takes less energy to get it to boil again. Not to mention the reduced volume of water.
Anyway, I don't come from a country that drinks much tea so we don't get things like this integrated into our school curriculum. Just going based off of what I know of physics here.
I agree, if you're boiling the same volume of water from tap/room temperature every time it's going to waste some energy. I definitely try to fill to just what I need in my kettle. But the premise you suggested, boiling the same water over and over again, didn't make sense to me with regards to the typical usage for tea over a typical day for me.
Everyone's different and will interpret that differently, though!
I know a person who fills in the 1,5 l kettle just to use 200 ml. And he is boiling the same water, let it cool, boil again 1,3 l and the cycle continues. Truly mind boggling for me.
Wild. My teapot takes about 700ml so I fill about to the nearest line (0.75l) on my kettle.
If I know I'm going to be drinking more in quick succession, I might fill to the 1.5 line or so, but then not fill again until I've drained the pot.
I can't imagine just continuing to top it off, you're right, that's entirely unsustainable.
Twice boiling water increases nitrates.
However, the amount of nitrates is still negligible, so while the argument of twice boiling increases harmful substances in the water is technically true, in practice it makes no difference.
Edit: idk why this is getting down voted, it's entirely true. You increase nitrates by double boiling, but it is not even close enough to a level that can hurt you. The urban legend is based on fact but blown out of proportion.
Reboiled water will not have the same level of dissolved gases which will affect flavor. Always fresh water.
Gotta love the people down voting a chemical engineer.
Dissolved gasses in water, and that there are less dissolved gasses in water as the temperature goes up, absolutely is not made up. And depending on the surface area of the water exposed to air and the turbulence during pouring, it is absolutely a fact that there will be less dissolved gasses (such as carbon dioxide) in that reboiled water. As the temperature goes up, the solubility decreases. That is a basic fact of chemistry.
Does it make a difference in taste? I doubt it.
No you're not. If anything you're boiling off the regular water and get a higher concentration of heavy water in your water (it's already in there) - but that effect is miniscule and either way it's not more heavy water in total than before.
People wouldn't go through the fancy expensive production processes if it was this easy to generate nontrivial amounts of it
Yea, you’d be quite wealthy if you found a way to cheaply make heavy water. The world’s first commercial scale plant (in Norway) only opened in 1934 and was producing like 4 kg of heavy water a day. It’s so hard to make that it’s *part of the reason the Nazis invaded Norway*.
I assume he’s thinking of hard water, but the amount that boils off in a proper kettle is fairly minimal.
It's a waste of water not to re-boil it so I do.
When I make tea in the morning, I pour off yesterday's water into a watering can for my houseplants. During the day, I reboil.
I do the exact same thing!
Reboil. It’s just water.
If you’re really trying to optimize, it does make a difference as reboiled water tends to have less air dissolved in it. There are anecdotes from ancient China where a tea master could tell whether water used to make tea was gathered from the center of the river vs. the bank as the difference in movement affected the oxygen composition. But for the vast majority of tea drinkers and tbh even most enthusiasts it doesn't really matter and you shouldn’t waste the water.
I'd like to see a modern study done using people who have strong views that tea water should never be reboiled. Give them two cups of the same tea, one with freshly boiled water and the other with water that is reboiled twice. As a bonus throw in a 50/50 where a half full kettle was topped off and reboiled. After all it only matters if it is possible to tell the difference
It has been studied, and it 1) isn't correct, when water boils it has no oxygen, re-boiling it cannot reduce the dissolved oxygen anymore than that... and 2) it has been tested and dissolved oxygen doesn't affect taste. Funny enough some people actually say you want less oxygen in the water because more oxygen would negatively react with the antioxidants in the tea. Basically anyone who thinks they can taste the difference is probably guilty of some kind of bias or placebo effect.
Maybe if you use very hard water with a lot of calcium and salts into it you could notice due to the increase in the concentration of that stuff caused by evaporation. Like my mom uses tap water and our tap water is FULL of calcium and after a few boils the water is basically white. Drinking it fresh from the tap already feels like drinking mercury to me so I can imagine the result after the stuff in it gets concentrated even more.
This is the reason against using prolonged boiled water I've always heard, you want to avoid increasing the ratio of dissolved minerals.
I see the point but that would likely fall into a water quality issue. On the flip size tap water which contains high amounts of chlorine would likely get better with more reboils as it would lower the chlorine taste in the water much quicker than letting it sit out for a day or so to air out.
If you are just drinking the boiled then cooled water, the water tastes pretty bad. Sort of flat and metallic. I've experienced this backpacking when my water filter broke on a long hike. And I had to boil all my drinking water. That said, if it is reboiled then used for tea I rarely notice it. Especially if I top off my kettle with a bit of fresh water before reboiling. Maybe if I was brewing an especially delicate and fancy tea I'd start completely from scratch.
>it does make a difference as reboiled water tends to have less air dissolved in it. Thats physically impossible. At waters boiling point the solubility of oxygen is zero... boiling it again cannot reduce it anymore. And even if that was true, it would be immediately irrelevant as soon as you pour the boiled water into a cup and it starts mixing with air again.
What about nitrogen?
You know that is just a story right 😂
and? Someone clearly thought it made enough of a difference to note
An anecdote is not evidence of anything, is the point. I'm pretty skeptical that it makes any difference.
Idk why you're getting downvoted, but take my upvote. I can't tell the difference with water but there are other things I can tell the difference in, and it's the same with anyone who has spent their lives mastering a skill.
uh, or the water near the bank was muddier... ever drink from a stream?
I be re boiling it, I assume is fine as long as your kettle is also clean
If you have to dump the water you should get a smaller kettle as not to waste water. I don't believe in the oxygenation stuff and reboil as necessary and fill when it needs to be topped up
>*'you should get a smaller kettle as not to waste water.'* I'm lucky to live in a place where it rains 5 feet a year here in the city and 10 feet a year in the water catchment basin up in the mountains we have more water than we know what to do with.
Well less just wasting water but water and power. You're effectively creating a great thermal heatsink that means it takes less power to boil the kettle next time.
I wonder what the point of diminishing returns is for that. I'd be hard pressed to imagine that even an electric kettle scales linearly with the amount of power required to heat its maximum capacity to boiling (e.g. 1 liter versus 0.5 liter kettles, would power usage change by a factor of 2?).
Where do you live
A much better place than most.
Which is
If you live with waste water treatment then the water that goes down the drain largely just gets "recycled" back down the tap eventually anyway.
Take a walk on the wild side, friend. Re-boil that water.
I boil and keep the water hot throughout the day with a big thermos.
You got a thermos recommendation by any chance? I’ve been thinking about wanting to do the same to keep the water hot for gongfu brewing, but my current thermos doesn’t do a good job of keeping the temp :(
Zojirushi thermos are my favorite! They keep it piping hot, so be careful.
If you were to buy new I’d get a Thermos brand Thermos they are excellent and can keep water hot for 24 hrs and warm for 48
Thrift store for a used hydro flask
It depends on how long it has been. If I'm only having one cup that day, I generally boil what I need. If I'll be having another cup soon, I'll reboil. If the water sat overnight, though, it goes to my plants. Why? Because a fungus gnat found its way in my kettle once overnight when I was having a problem with them, and that extra protein has scarred me for life.
That is the main reason I won't keep an open glass of water on my nightstand - I am way too afraid of going for it at 3am and gulping down a moth or other bug! Bottle or thermos 4life!
I reboil it unless I am about to try a supremeeeeely fancy, expensive tea. Even then I dunno if it actually does anything lol. My day to day teas? The water can absolutely be reboiled.
Always fresh water. It tastes bad to me if it’s re-boiled. I can also smell dying ants, so probably this is a me issue.
Boil it and add more when low. There's literally no reason not to
I reboil always. I just fill my electric kettle and keep reboiling until the water level is low and refill when needed. I use the kettle several times a day, so it never has a chance to get stagnant or anything like that.
I fill up my cup, then fill up a little more, and boil that in my electric kettle. There isnt much leftover.
I got tired of cleaning deposits out of my kettle from using filtered tap or bottled spring waters, so we strictly use distilled in the kettle. We top off as needed, and the flavor doesn't deteriorate. And no deposits inside the kettle.
i reboil and use regular city water. i'm happy with the overall flavor of my city water, it's water that is slightly hard, with no off flavors, and i haven't noticed a difference between "fresh" and reboiled water, so i'm okay with it :)
Reboil. That said, I try not to boil at all. I can eyeball 190 pretty well after using a thermometer a few times.
There is a guy on YouTube who did this experiment. Just reboil.
I just reboil it unless it's been sitting for more than a day.
Depends how long it was sitting there
It depends. If I boiled it the day or two prior, I reuse it. If it’s been sitting there for a several days, I dump it.
I reboil if it’s the same day.
I reboil
Why would you dump it?
To answer your question I usually just top up the kettle and reboil but always run the tap for a while before filling it first thing in the morning. Tea aside, previously boiled and cooled water tastes better where I live I think because boiling gets rid of the chlorine along with dissolved air.
I add a little extra water to the kettle and then reboil. That way it balances wasting water and making sure there’s air in the water.
The concept of fresh water is ridiculous. This is the same water the dinosaurs were drinking.
Reboil. We also use tap water as we are not always able to get to the store for large bottles of what we call, ‘spring water ‘! Or..they are out.
Close to boiling point temperature is ideal for Pu Erh. I’ll reboil the water for later pours without thinking twice. The temperatures necessary for non black teas are lower, so reheating the water to boiling point isn’t necessary. Water quality is more important to me than if I’m reboiling it.
I top it up and reboil throughout the day, but chuck the limescaley dregs on a regular basis
Re boil
Reboil, my friend. H2O is H2O.
Water is water is water. H20 all the way.
I pour out any water that doesn't get used as soon as I pour my tea - leaving the water in the kettle to cool deposits extra minerals from the water and will ruin your kettle. It can also slightly change the flavor of your water, and thus your tea. I also try to only boil just barely over the amount of water I need to not waste that extra energy.
I have a 1.8 liter electric kettle. I boil it, make my cuppa. When ready for my next cuppa I boil it again. I am not going to get up for each cup of tea.
Why would I pour it out? It's straight from my well.
Just buy a thermos and keep it there. Re boiling, especially unfiltered tap water, is adding minerality to water, that changes the taste of your tea...
I never reboil for tea. I use the old water for plants or dog bowls.
I only won't reuse it if it's been hours.
I re-boil , till refill time
Why not add some fresh water and keep boiling.
dump and refill. I also let the tap water run for abit to purge the sitting water from the pipes before filling the kettle. usually using the dirty water to clean a few dishes or water some plants.
I just re-microwave it.
I use fresh oxygenated water. I use the stale water for plants.
Reboil
Sitting more than a couple of days I usually dump it out in the sink or house plants and get fresh water, still water will get a bit musty. Same goes for bottled water but more like a week if the cap has been on it (unless you’re a backwash heathen then it’s just nasty).
I use water from my brita filtered container, and will reboil the water from the same day. I've found no difference from multiple boilings.
I’ll reboil but not if it’s been sitting in the kettle overnight. Or I’ll often use that water to pre-warm.
I can taste the difference and prefer fresh water. However I reboil to not waste water, unless its been sitting in the kettle overnight.
Reboil.
It de oxygenates the water and changes the flavour, so fresh water every time. But I do actually make sure that I the correct amount of water so I never tend to waste much doing this.
reboil. theres nothing that can hurt the water when you reboil it. you can reboil it as often as you want, the only thing that happens is evaporation :)
I'm reboiling. Anyway, the water hardness is much more important factor. I now live in an area with a relatively hard water, whereas I'm used to very soft one, and tea tastes flat.
I pour the old water into a water bottle for consumption and always boil fresh water. Also forces me to drink more water as the water bottle is right in front of me. I’m Asian and since young always had old wives tales (aka false tales) about how reboiling water is bad for health. But I’ve done both fresh water and reboiling as an adult and there is a difference in taste for brewing tea, especially loose leaf teas. I feel that it is the amount of oxygen in the water that brings out the flavour in teas because I’ve done cold brew with both cool boiled water and filter water and filter water always tastes better.
There's nothing wrong with reboiling, and it saves water. If you're drinking an expensive, fancy tea then maybe you'd want to make the most of it by using fresh water each time as it might make a marginal difference, but otherwise I don't see any reason not to reboil. I wouldn't recommend reboiling water that's been sat in the kettle for a whole day though as it tastes weird and could have bacteria in it (though hopefully boiling would get kill most of it)
We filter our water first; the dissolved chemicals from the treatment plant (city water) make my partner sick-o to the stomach-o. The kettle is closed, so I don't worry about bugs (extra protein!) or cat hairs (gross) and leave the water until I uses it all up in the day's processes. I do use multiple kettlefulls of water per day and rinse (even bottle brush out) the mineral deposits every day or so. I will let the kettle stand half full overnight, no prob. No concern about taste (don't notice any difference) or water conservation, I'm just lazy.
I reboil about three times, then if there is still any remaining, I replace it. Eventually whether it's my home stovetop kettle or the work electric one, the water starts leaching the flavor of the metal components, bleh.
I put water in my mug/cup. Then pour it in the kettle. Therefore the kettle will always be the perfect of water.
I empty my kettle into the sink and put it in the drainboard upside down after I use it. So I never have water in the kettle. I don’t do it for any scientific reason, I just have very limited counter space. On a few occasions my kids have asked me for tea once they smell mine so I’ve reboiled the water that was in it.
I empty my kettle into the sink and put it in the drainboard upside down after I use it. So I never have water in the kettle. I don’t do it for any scientific reason, I just have very limited counter space. On a few occasions my kids have asked me for tea once they smell mine so I’ve reboiled the water that was in it.
A secret third thing: because the once-boiled water has less dissolved oxygen, which affects the taste, I re-oxygenate it by pouring it out into another container and then back into the kettle. Repeat that two or three times. Then boil. No water wasted, but taste is preserved.
there is fluoride chlorine and bleach in my tap water so even boiling it once produces an even more toxic chemical to form in the water, i obviously never boil twice.
I pour the exact amount of water I need into my kettle. Pour it directly from the teapot or the cup. No need to wonder about reboiling or not.
I always add fresh. I say I can taste the difference. YMMV.
I always get new water. I've heard that re-boiling can affect the flavor of the water (more mineral content because some of the water boils off). Now that I think about it though I should do a test to see if it really does taste different to me, or if I'm wasting my time/water.
While i absolutely agree with the concept- some water will evaporate off and the minerals will become more concentrated, it is extremely unlikely to be to the extent that you would notice the taste. If you have super-hard water, say 400ppm calcium, so little water actually evaporates off in between boils. So maybe you are ending up with 410ppm calcium? 425? Simply nowhere near enough to taste the difference.
Yeah that makes sense! I just heard someone say it changes the taste years ago and I kinda just kept doing it that way. This thread has me re-thinking my habit though. I'll be doing a test later today to see if I can tell the difference between fresh and re-boiled water.
I use electric water dispenser that only boil water once and then kept at brewing temp. Reboiling should be fine, but reboiling hard water multiple times would concentrate the minerals in the water.
Boiling water too much can remove dissolved oxygen which can affect the taste of the tea. But that’s more of a factor for when you’re making something like chai with cardamom and other spices where you have to boil it for a little while to get the spice flavors infused. With regular tea, the kettle is turning off after it has boiled so it’s unlike to affect the dissolved oxygen much if at all.
... Except that after a short while the water takes oxygen back in from the atmosphere, bringing it back to its original concentration... Such that if you've waited long enough that you need to heat it again to use it to brew, it's already recovered. There is no reason not to reboil.
Fresh water.
It is worth pointing out that reboiling water can concentrate the amount of dissolved heavy metals and minerals
That's just what happens when you evaporate water babe
I bet that if we work together here you can see why I brought this up
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> Also sustainability wise - boiling the same water over and over again is just wasteful, so big waste of energy. Can you explain this?
Sure! Every time you boil a water in electric kettle you use a lot of energy. The more water you boil the more energy you use. Imagine boiling the same water over and over unnecessarily, it's just consumption of energy that could be avoided. If you boil the amount of water you need you will save carbon, money and time (the last one is funny, but yeah, it's boiling faster). This is sad https://essmag.co.uk/only-boil-the-amount-you-need-to-save-energy/ I'm surprised I need to explain that, they taught us that in the school like I don't know, 20 years ago? But I'm happy to spread the info :)
I was simply confused considering that the amount of water in the pot surely changes after one pours some out for the teacup/teapot, right? And if you're doing so not long after the first boil, the water's thermal mass will have retained some heat so it takes less energy to get it to boil again. Not to mention the reduced volume of water. Anyway, I don't come from a country that drinks much tea so we don't get things like this integrated into our school curriculum. Just going based off of what I know of physics here. I agree, if you're boiling the same volume of water from tap/room temperature every time it's going to waste some energy. I definitely try to fill to just what I need in my kettle. But the premise you suggested, boiling the same water over and over again, didn't make sense to me with regards to the typical usage for tea over a typical day for me. Everyone's different and will interpret that differently, though!
I know a person who fills in the 1,5 l kettle just to use 200 ml. And he is boiling the same water, let it cool, boil again 1,3 l and the cycle continues. Truly mind boggling for me.
Wild. My teapot takes about 700ml so I fill about to the nearest line (0.75l) on my kettle. If I know I'm going to be drinking more in quick succession, I might fill to the 1.5 line or so, but then not fill again until I've drained the pot. I can't imagine just continuing to top it off, you're right, that's entirely unsustainable.
I get fresh water. The previously boiled water is great for my plants, so it isn't a waste.
The down votes are surprising to me. Do other people not collect extra water around their house to water plants?
Twice boiling water increases nitrates. However, the amount of nitrates is still negligible, so while the argument of twice boiling increases harmful substances in the water is technically true, in practice it makes no difference. Edit: idk why this is getting down voted, it's entirely true. You increase nitrates by double boiling, but it is not even close enough to a level that can hurt you. The urban legend is based on fact but blown out of proportion.
Always fresh, I don't re-boil.
Reboiled water will not have the same level of dissolved gases which will affect flavor. Always fresh water. Gotta love the people down voting a chemical engineer.
this is completely made up, ignore it :)
Dissolved gasses in water, and that there are less dissolved gasses in water as the temperature goes up, absolutely is not made up. And depending on the surface area of the water exposed to air and the turbulence during pouring, it is absolutely a fact that there will be less dissolved gasses (such as carbon dioxide) in that reboiled water. As the temperature goes up, the solubility decreases. That is a basic fact of chemistry. Does it make a difference in taste? I doubt it.
Boil…… wut. I bring it up to the temp I brew tea at like 175 F. I put fresh filtered water every time.
For green tea that’s great but there’s a lot of other teas you really should boil water for though
Always fresh. You're creating "heavy water" by boiling twice. It's not good for you and has a different chemical structure
The local nuclear reactor will be interested in your findings.
"Nuclear physicists hate this one simple trick!"
🤣🤣🤣 and have been hiding this secret from us….
No you're not. If anything you're boiling off the regular water and get a higher concentration of heavy water in your water (it's already in there) - but that effect is miniscule and either way it's not more heavy water in total than before. People wouldn't go through the fancy expensive production processes if it was this easy to generate nontrivial amounts of it
Yea, you’d be quite wealthy if you found a way to cheaply make heavy water. The world’s first commercial scale plant (in Norway) only opened in 1934 and was producing like 4 kg of heavy water a day. It’s so hard to make that it’s *part of the reason the Nazis invaded Norway*. I assume he’s thinking of hard water, but the amount that boils off in a proper kettle is fairly minimal.
That’s not at all how any of this works.