a guide for the water you already have

Amgalan Chin has spent years calibrating his palate to the water that arrives when you open the tap in seven American cities. Not because he romanticises municipal plumbing, but because he understands something that most tea drinkers resist — that the liquid you brew with is never neutral. It carries calcium from ancient limestone, chlorine from treatment tanks, and a fingerprint of dissolved minerals that can lift a Shú Pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) into deep, earthy resonance, or flatten a Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) into watery silence. The guide he has written here does not ask you to switch to bottled spring water; it teaches you to read the water you already have.

This is a manual in two parts. The first part maps the tap water of New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and Austin — total dissolved solids, calcium-magnesium ratios, bicarbonate alkalinity, and the seasonal shifts that municipal reports never fully capture. Each city entry opens with the kind of detail only a resident master would notice: the way a glass of unfiltered NYC tap swirls with a faint chlorine scent on a summer morning, or how Seattle’s soft, lake-fed water leaves a gaiwan lid feeling almost too smooth after a long session. The second part translates those water profiles into gongfu adjustments — what leaf-to-water ratio, what pour height, what resting time between steeps will coax the best from your leaves. Amgalan Chin, the cross-regional tea expert who leads this work, has shared his findings on puerh.app, where pu-erh storage and water absorption are debated with the meticulousness of a laboratory.

Throughout the guide, the writing refuses hyperbole. There is no promise of a perfect cup, only the quiet confidence that comes from repeated tasting: early in the morning, with a white porcelain gaiwan and a kettle that has just hit 95°C, the mineral tang of Chicago water on the tongue is unmistakable — stone-heavy, almost like a whisper of dry riverbed. A Lǎo Bān Zhāng (老班章) sheng pu-erh, dropped into that water, will unfold differently than it would in San Francisco’s softer, Hetch Hetchy-fed profile. The guide charts these differences without judgment, because Amgalan sees each water as a collaborator, not an obstacle.

Filtration advice runs from the embarrassingly simple — letting water stand overnight to off-gas chlorine — to the precise: blending reverse osmosis water with a fixed percentage of tap to rebuild a mineral skeleton that suits Yán Chá (岩茶). The approach always begins with the numbers, the TDS meter humming its digital verdict on the kitchen counter, but the real teaching happens in the senses. The slight prickle of overly hard water on the gums, the flatness beneath a tea’s high notes when magnesium is absent — these are the details the guide holds up to the light. For those who wish to deepen the science, a companion module on tea.school walks through water mineral solubility and its effect on tea polyphenols, with Amgalan’s voice guiding the screen.

The guide was born from the thousands of water-testing sessions Amgalan has run for the constellation’s properties and the q&a that followed every time a guest opened a tap and frowned. Now it sits as a free digital resource, equally at home on a phone in a Brooklyn apartment or a tablet in a Bay Area kitchen. No travel required, no special equipment beyond a kettle and a willingness to taste what your city is actually giving you.

the water programme

The virtual programme built into the guide is both a protocol and an invitation. Upon receiving the digital packet, you are encouraged to select a single tea from the recommended pairing list — one tea that will serve as your control across all the water you test. Amgalan often suggests a lightly aged Shú Pǔ’ěr (熟普洱), its dark, molasses-sweet character sensitive to hard water’s ability to push out earthiness, or a Míng Qián Lóng Jǐng (明前龙井), whose chestnut fragrance becomes shy the moment mineral content climbs too high. The routine is simple: weigh the leaves, bring the tap water to a full rolling boil, and pour with the same hand every time, while a small porcelain cup catches the light that filters through the brew.

Each session is meant to be repeated across a week, at different times of day, because municipal water is not static — chlorine levels drop overnight, then surge as the morning pumps engage. You take notes in the margins of the city-profile card, matching your sensory impressions to the numbers: a tingle on the tongue that corresponds to 280 ppm TDS in Austin, a round, coating sweetness at Seattle’s 25 ppm that vanishes the moment you switch to green tea. Amgalan’s voice is present in the guide’s sidebar, offering quick adjustments — decant the water from height to drive off some volatile chlorine, or steep for five seconds longer if the first infusion seems hollow.

The programme also recommends a tea you would normally never consider brewing in your local water: a floral Dān Cōng (单丛) in Los Angeles’s mineral-rich supply, if only to learn where your palate places the limit. By the end, you will have built a personal water-tea profile, a kind of literacy that stays with you whenever you travel or host. The guide closes with a list of teas from the constellation’s portfolio that pair elegantly with each city’s water, a quiet nod that the resources of puerh.app and tea.travel can take you further — whether you want to age a cake in a specific humidity or join a water-focused tasting on the road.

Amenities

• detailed TDS and mineral analysis for seven cities

• tea-tolerance charts pairing each water with sheng, shou, green, white, and yancha

• filtration guidance (charcoal, reverse osmosis, remineralisation)

• portable TDS meter recommendation and calibration steps

• master notes on adjusting leaf-to-water ratio and pour technique

• printable one-page cheat sheet for travel

• video overview of water-testing protocol by Amgalan Chin

What’s included

• downloadable PDF guide (60+ pages, updated quarterly)

• seven individual city water-profile cards

• recommended tea pairings for each water type

• quarterly email update when municipal reports change

• direct email support from Amgalan Chin for follow-up questions

• audio summary of key TDS thresholds narrated by the master