Is it true that you shouldn’t boil water twice? For example, if you boiled a kettle of water and used it to make tea, then should you pour the water you didn’t use out?
I always reboil many times until the pot is empty. Has anybody heard any wisdom on the subject? N says his Grandma was adamant that water should never be reboiled but is anybody else aware of this?
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m not sure why this would be. Boiling water causes no chemical changes in the water. (Unlike oil, for instance.) It would cause the impurities in the water to concentrate, as water evaporates and the impurities are left behind. But drinking water in developed countries should be mostly free of harmful impurities to begin with.
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Please, Clarissa, I beg you, never, ever, ever boil already boiled water if you’re making tea.
Only freshly boiled water will do, because of the oxygenation process, which will bring out all the aromatic flavours when the water is poured over tea leaves.
Do not reuse boiled water, even after it has cooled down, not even to water plants. Just throw it out, or use for washing dishes.
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Hah! I sincerely didn’t know. Thank you for explaining this!
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Could you please explain what you mean about the oxygenation process?
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Don’t know of any reason not to, unless your water is very hard or very contaminated.
Do you get a lot of scale buildup on the inside of the kettle?
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I’ve never had any objection to reboiling, I’d just feel cagey about leaving it sitting around. Honestly, I don’t tend to have a lot of excess boiled water sitting around so I’ve never thought about it
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I don’t reuse boiled water because it just doesn’t feel right to me and that’s all the evidence I need lol.
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I was taught that you should shake water to get air bubbles into it. The extra oxygen is good for the tea? When you boil it some of that oxygen evaporates and it supposedly changes the flavor of the tea.
Standing water can go stagnant, or grow mildew or mold, which is gross. I doubt your water stands for that long.
Just test it by tasting tea made both ways.
What kind of tea do you like?
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“N says his Grandma was adamant that water should never be reboiled but is anybody else aware of this?”
Yes, many people raised on the prairie lands that were once ancient inland seas are cautious about that because you are basically concentrating salts. The prairie soils may be extremely fertile because of subsequent glacial and loess deposits, but the salts from below can emerge leaving “alkali” lakes and sloughs — valued by Native bands as “Medicine Lakes” for bathing, valued similar to the European baths, and athletes soaking in hot water laden with “Epsom salts” to avoid muscle cramping.
I grew up around “alkali” high pH water, you really did not want to drink much of it. And the older ladies in my family used not only boiled water and particularly any left over tea(acid) to water their plants, I suspect they knew what they were doing ;-D
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@oldcowboy3
I’m Anglo-Italian, so I would never presume to teach any Midwesterner or Prairies Canadian anything about anything, but I do know a thing or two about making tea ;-D
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Avi
LOL, well, if the area I was talking about received even one single inch less annual precipitation, it would technically be considered a desert. And while I don’t think that the ladies of even oatmeal savages would disagree with you about proper tea, potable water was, and still is a precious commodity — and cold tea being acidic can be beneficial to some house plants trying to grow in alkaline conditions ;-D
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“adamant that water should never be reboiled but is anybody else aware of this?”
I’ve heard this a lot, actually. I tend to think this is a thing for people who take their tea very seriously.
From what I remember, that’s N while you’re kind of a tea slob (no shame I am too).
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He’s Russian, so yes, tea is sacred to him. You should have seen his reaction when early in the relationship I suggested we use tea bags. It was like telling me to put canned tuna into borscht.
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“put canned tuna into borscht”
I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me…. though I am thinking about how tuna would go in Olivier…. or gołąbki…. so many possibilities…. I know! Tuna pierogi!
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I heard in Odesa they put fish in borscht. Not tuna, of course. Fresh local fish. I absolutely despise them for it.
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“Russian, so yes, tea is sacred to him”
Are russians more like Brits in that ‘tea’ always refers to a drink made from tea leaves prepared the same way all the time or more like Germans in that ‘tea’ refers not only to… real tea but also all manner of herbal infusions from different plants (many assumed to have medicinal power in healing minor illnesses or preventing them from becoming more serious).
Poland is definitely in the German camp.
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Related question. Do you guys microwave water for tea? I’ve had scientist friends tell me there’s no difference between water boiled in a kettle vs microwave but I don’t believe them. It just doesn’t sound right.
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It’s an abomination, I tell you. An abomination! Water for tea should never be microwaved unless you are in s disaster zone and there’s really no other option.
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Exactly. My bugmen rationalist friends can talk about chemistry and heat transfer all day but taste is not rational. The same wine someone told you came from a $200 bottle of wine tastes different than if they told you it came from a $5 bottle. Just the knowledge that the water came from a microwave makes a difference in how I perceive it. The same coffee steeped for exactly the same time tastes better if it’s part of a ritual rather than you drinking it in a hurry. Some people just don’t get it.
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I refuse to own a microwave.
A lot of electricity and an unforgivable amount of counter space just to ruin the texture of food!
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I use it sparingly, mostly to quickly steam frozen vegetables to add at the end to soups or to cook raw potato.
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Exactly what we would have used it for, plus reheating leftover rice: and counter space being dear, I can’t justify losing half my kitchen worksurface for that.
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C Vitamin found in oranges and other citrus fruit has the same chemical structure as synthetically made C vitamin, and yet most doctors and nutritionists will swear that naturally occurring C vitamin is better and more effective than the synthetic variety.
I’ve never actually seen water boil in a microwave, though that’s what many people think they’re doing when they shove their mugs with their pathetic teabags into a microwave. BUT I have actually seen water boil in a pot or in my kettle which is when it becomes effervescent, which is another way of saying oxygenated [with regards to water, not other elements].
I personally only use (weakly mineralised) mineral water, and tea tastes much better, but that’s because I live in an area with very hard water and the limescale makes tea taste horrible.
Two shouts for N and proper tea, properly made.
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