If You Reboil Your Kettle To Make Tea, You're Doing It All Wrong

If you reboil water when making a cuppa, you could actually be spoiling the taste.

That’s according to chairman of the UK Tea and Infusions Association, William Gorman, who urged people to always use fresh water in their kettle when making a cup of tea.

He told The Telegraph that boiling the same water more than once results in a “dull” taste. He also shared some controversial views surrounding microwaving your cuppa if it goes cold. 

”Usually when people’s tea goes cold they reboil the kettle and make another cup. But doing this you are guaranteed to give yourself a dull cup of tea,” he said.

“You need freshly drawn water for a good cup because reboiling it takes out all the oxygen and nitrogen out of it.”

If your cup of tea does go cold halfway through drinking it, Gorman is a strong advocate of microwaving it for 15-20 seconds instead of making a new one.

His advice might sound controversial but on hearing his explanation, we guess it makes sense. 

“When you microwave tea all you’re doing from a scientific point of view is just moving the molecules around and getting it back up to a decent temperature. It is not impacting the flavour at all,” he explained.

It’s worth noting that if you have perfectly pure, distilled and deionised water, nothing will happen if you reboil it. However, ordinary water contains dissolved gases and minerals.

When you boil this water once, volatile compounds and dissolved gases are removed, according to author and scientist, Dr Anne Helmenstine.

Yet if you boil the same water twice, you risk increasing concentrations of undesirable chemicals that may be lurking in the water. 

As Julie Harrison from Improve Your Health previously told The Sun: “The chemicals in the water get concentrated, things like nitrates, arsenic and fluoride. Every time you reboil the water, they get more concentrated, and you really don’t want to be having them in your body.”