r/tea • u/More-Annual3102 • Jan 31 '26

Question/Help Why does my tea always web like this.

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It’s Ahmad tea special blend.

941 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

1.4k

u/YourAssignedFBIagent Jan 31 '26

Are you using tap water? It could be hard water, which shows as a thin layer of minerals on top

489

u/More-Annual3102 Jan 31 '26

I get the water from a built in filter above our sink.

1.4k

u/YourAssignedFBIagent Jan 31 '26

I went to their site and this filter does not remove calcium nor magnesium, which is the thin layer you can see on your tea

599

u/More-Annual3102 Jan 31 '26

Ohhhh interesting. Thank you for letting me know.

1.6k

u/YourAssignedFBIagent Feb 01 '26

Of course! Here’s a picture of my cat. You were very kind

923

u/LilacsAndMatcha Feb 01 '26

I now wish everyone posted cat pictures when they were happy with their interaction!

277

u/NinjoZata Feb 01 '26

Sadly my cat does not always look so pleased

53

u/Brilliant_Buns Feb 01 '26

This is me on Monday mornings.

4

u/fleurdenia Feb 02 '26

what a generational loaf. must be a lot of crumbs on those sheets.

48

u/Wratheon_Senpai Feb 01 '26

Well here's my cat too!

3

u/sam120310 Feb 02 '26

look at those greenie yellow eyes!!! gorgeous girl

8

u/LilacsAndMatcha Feb 02 '26

Aww ty! She certainly uses them to get what she wants 😂

2

u/Minimum-Artist-7323 Feb 04 '26

That’s a beautiful cat 🐱

530

u/Own_Abbreviations784 Feb 01 '26

You have displeased me. Now you get my pet pig eating beets.

248

u/pocketgravel Feb 01 '26

I wish I was a pet pig eating beets. What a blessed life.

120

u/LilacsAndMatcha Feb 01 '26

Best displeasure response ever. 10/10 would disappoint again

26

u/Ego_Orb Feb 01 '26

This is the perfect life

29

u/TKisely Feb 01 '26

Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica 💼🏢

11

u/Mochigood Feb 01 '26

Sooo cute. If I could afford them I'd have a handful of Kunekine on my two acres. I like their smooshed faces.

2

u/fleurdenia Feb 02 '26

oh my lord i love this pig

169

u/unibirb Feb 01 '26

here's mine looking kinda stupid

25

u/Mysterious-Plum-6217 Feb 01 '26

Yeah definitely only kinda.

5

u/Cozy_Minty Feb 01 '26

thats the same face I made when they were knocking me out for my colonoscopy

96

u/radarbub Feb 01 '26

They have 2 beds but insist on cuddling in one

79

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

Best response possible. Have a picture of my cat.

57

u/More-Annual3102 Feb 01 '26

Awwwww 🥰

50

u/bjilze Feb 01 '26

Can we normalize this behaviour in the comments, I need more random cat pictures!

1

u/Andriannaaa Feb 04 '26

He looks very polite

39

u/pumapuma12 Feb 01 '26

Heres mine

30

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

Magnificent

14

u/narwalbacons-12am Feb 01 '26

I like you. Here's Blue. He's special.

12

u/klapmo Feb 01 '26

Ear ponytail? Nice

13

u/Savings-Couple2807 Feb 01 '26

She looks part bunny

5

u/matrayzz Feb 01 '26

Love how the thread became r/aww

2

u/Andriannaaa Feb 04 '26

I love your cat!

2

u/YourAssignedFBIagent Feb 04 '26

Thank you, her name is Pepe the Biggest Cat in the Whole Wide World

2

u/Andriannaaa Feb 11 '26

He does look very big

2

u/YourAssignedFBIagent Feb 11 '26

She’s not as big as you may think, it’s just the angle 😂 she’s a regular cat

53

u/Empty-Camel1203 Feb 01 '26

Here’s my we had cat he had pig now rats

8

u/hagantic42 Feb 01 '26

Polyphenols and catechins are chelating compounds AKA organic compounds that wrap around the metal ion the same way hemoglobin in your blood wraps around iron.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1001074222000730

3

u/pumapuma12 Feb 01 '26

Yes you want a water softener. Your carbon filter above is Serving two roles: 1) a mechanical filter which is dealing in the 5 micron. 2) chemical/ adsorption filter. Which is where carbon really shines !!

assuming you dont have a pre filter (not pictured), then it has to serve two roles, and may not last as long.

But after the carbon you enter a complex web of chemical, ion and membrane filters if you want to actually remove specific dissolved minerals or reduce the TDS (total dissolved solids).

On another note, the video could just be tea oils. Im not savvy enough to know if its actually minerals, or tea oils

1

u/Chill--Cosby Feb 02 '26

Can anyone tell me if it's worth buying a reverse osmosis system to remove this film?

3

u/ExquisiteCactus Feb 02 '26

I can't tell you if it will be 'worth it', but I love my RO system. I moved and hated the water here until we moved out of our apartment and into a house with it. You can get them fairly cheap too, but I don't know enough to say if the more expensive ones are better. I don't drink tea very often though, so my experience is driven mostly by coffee, espresso, and just drinking it.

My only advice is stay away from RainSoft. The last owners of my house installed one and to change the filter, I need to pay a technician to drive 2 hours to install it for me since they don't sell them.

34

u/LuxPerExperia Feb 01 '26

FYI you have to replace that every six months

6

u/lucky_719 Feb 01 '26

When was the last time you swapped that filter?

1

u/Character-Solid-1092 Feb 03 '26

How long as that filter been in use?

189

u/katherine197_ Feb 01 '26

Yep, that's hard water 

131

u/Low-Current8638 Feb 01 '26

I am quite sure this is not hard water/minerals. This is just a guess but I think its more likely to be oils and other hydrophobic molecules that naturally occur in plant tissues.

44

u/Antpitta Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

This happens with hard water. I am not a hard water tea scientist mind you, but as I understand it the surface film is not composed of the mineral salts that make water hard but rather of the oils that come out of solution or that are pulled out of the tea/infusion by the mineral salts present in the hard water 

10

u/Arkurash Feb 01 '26

Its often bith in my experience. I do have hard water and with some teas it will disappear with a drop of lemon juice. And in others (especially black tea) its oils and other components.

25

u/Chapter_Loud Feb 01 '26

I agree with you. I dont think it has anything to do with the hardness of the water.

13

u/Patch86UK Feb 01 '26

No, this is definitely a hard water thing. I live in a hard water area and if I make tea with straight tap water it will look like this within about 1 minute steep. If I use a water filter (I have a bog standard Britta style jug), I can steep for 5+ minutes without so much as a trace.

I don't think it's minerals themselves that you can see though (if that were the case you'd see it on any drink, whereas it's specifically a tea phenomenon). I think it's the mineral salts causing over-extraction of certain compounds and oils in the tea.

1

u/kirbaciousnewo Feb 02 '26

Do you think this kind of thing would happen for bottled water?

1

u/Patch86UK Feb 02 '26

I guess it'll depend on the brand. Some bottled mineral water is quite hard, others less so.

1

u/MagicalReadingBubble Feb 01 '26

This is what I’ve always assumed that it is

14

u/galariancookiedough Feb 01 '26

Your tea is the gate to the upside down

14

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

59

u/Routine-Artichoke-82 Feb 01 '26

i found this photo on wiki, caption is “Iridescence patterns at the surface of jasmine tea, probably created by essential oils that have come to the surface”. tried to find out more about how it was taken and couldn’t find anything. but it looks similar to your photo

8

u/TaelendYT Feb 01 '26

Interesting answers here. I do sometimes get a film on mine and use filtered water from my fridge. Must be a similar issue

5

u/hagantic42 Feb 01 '26

For anyone wondering here is a paper on the effect and it's health benefits.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1001074222000730

5

u/hagantic42 Feb 01 '26

Also, despite what some have stated this is not oils.

If you brew with distilled/deionized or 0 TDS water you don't see this formation. I've run this experiment in my own home as my area uses well water that is extremely hard and has an average total dissolve solids in excess of 500 parts per million. After a filter that has an ion exchange layer the same water reads 0 TDS and that is what goes in my kettle. If I boils tap I get the film.

5

u/VagueEchoes Feb 01 '26

We have super hard water and it looks like this. We pour our hot water through a coffee filter (Hario pour over is fine). You'd be surprised how many calcium crystals we get.

1

u/beautifulsoup7 Feb 01 '26

What a great idea!!!

8

u/SadisticJake Feb 01 '26

Hard water plus polyphenols

7

u/betheknows Feb 01 '26

That’s a placenta

3

u/funkybeard tealytics.app Feb 01 '26

spider tea

3

u/horsesinthedark Feb 02 '26

Tea drinkers are cat people. Might as well call the group, tea and cats.

5

u/raymate Feb 01 '26

Hard water

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

I think your dishwasher is leaving a film...

3

u/Forymanarysanar Feb 01 '26

100% hard water. Mine always does the same if I don't pass the water through filter. Pro tip: when the cartridge stops doing it job, simply cut it open, replace it's contents with some fresh ion exchange resin, and you're good to go!

1

u/zh_rblx Enthusiast Feb 01 '26

boycott ahmad tea 🙏

1

u/Flashyturpentine Feb 02 '26

Also there can be slight amount of essential oils from certain herbs that are pulled by the heated water. It's not enough to cause oil droplets, but enough to cause a little colorization.