Charts
Tea re-steeping chart
Most tea is thrown away with cups still in it. The table below shows how many infusions each type actually gives — Western-style and Gong Fu-style — computed from 176 tea profiles, with ladders running as far as 20 infusions from a single portion of leaf.
Re-steeps by tea type — Western and Gong Fu
| Tea type | Re-steeps (Western) | Gong Fu infusions | Total leaf time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green tea40 teas | 2range 0–4 | 5range 4–6 · 22/40 | 2 min 53 s |
| White tea15 teas | 3range 3–5 | 8range 5–12 · 15/15 | 8 min 10 s |
| Oolong tea29 teas | 2range 1–3 | 8range 4–15 · 29/29 | 6 min 40 s |
| Pu-erh tea16 teas | 3range 0–4 | 12range 9–20 · 16/16 | 5 min 45 s |
| Black tea33 teas | 1range 0–2 | 6range 5–8 · 6/33 | 2 min 55 s |
| Herbal tea43 teas | 1range 0–7 | 7range 6–8 · 2/43 | 7 min 8 s |
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The longest-lasting teas
The fifteen teas with the most Gong Fu infusions, and the ten that give the most Western re-steeps.
| Tea | Tea type | Gong Fu infusions | Leaf per 100 ml | Total leaf time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lao Ban Zhang | Pu-erh tea | 20 | 5 g | 14 min 57 s |
| Aged Sheng Pu-erh | Pu-erh tea | 18 | 5 g | 11 min 38 s |
| Menghai 7542 | Pu-erh tea | 15 | 6 g | 11 min |
| Mi Lan Xiang | Oolong tea | 15 | 7 g | 9 min 45 s |
| Phoenix Dan Cong | Oolong tea | 15 | 7 g | 9 min 15 s |
| Yiwu Mountain Raw | Pu-erh tea | 15 | 5 g | 8 min 25 s |
| Bulang Mountain Raw | Pu-erh tea | 15 | 6 g | 8 min 22 s |
| Bing Dao (Ice Island) | Pu-erh tea | 14 | 5 g | 7 min 6 s |
| Tie Guan Yin (Iron Goddess) | Oolong tea | 12 | 7 g | 11 min 15 s |
| Menghai 7572 | Pu-erh tea | 12 | 6 g | 6 min 7 s |
| Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) | Oolong tea | 12 | 9 g | 8 min 58 s |
| Sheng Pu-erh (Raw) | Pu-erh tea | 12 | 5 g | 6 min 7 s |
| Aged Oolong (Lao Cha) | Oolong tea | 12 | 8 g | 18 min 30 s |
| Yu Lan Xiang (Magnolia Fragrance) | Oolong tea | 12 | 7 g | 5 min 15 s |
| Ceylon Silver Tips | White tea | 12 | 6.5 g | 13 min 25 s |
Infusion ladder
-
Lao Ban Zhang Pu-erh tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 5 s 2: 5 s 3: 5 s 4: 7 s 5: 8 s 6: 10 s 7: 12 s 8: 15 s 9: 18 s 10: 22 s 11: 25 s 12: 30 s 13: 35 s 14: 40 s 15: 50 s 16: 1 min 17: 1 min 15 s 18: 1 min 30 s 19: 1 min 50 s 20: 2 min 10 s 21: 2 min 30 s -
Aged Sheng Pu-erh Pu-erh tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 10 s 3: 8 s 4: 8 s 5: 10 s 6: 10 s 7: 12 s 8: 15 s 9: 18 s 10: 22 s 11: 25 s 12: 30 s 13: 35 s 14: 40 s 15: 45 s 16: 55 s 17: 1 min 5 s 18: 1 min 20 s 19: 1 min 40 s 20: 2 min -
Menghai 7542 Pu-erh tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 10 s 2: 10 s 3: 10 s 4: 10 s 5: 12 s 6: 15 s 7: 18 s 8: 22 s 9: 28 s 10: 35 s 11: 45 s 12: 55 s 13: 1 min 10 s 14: 1 min 30 s 15: 1 min 50 s 16: 2 min 10 s -
Mi Lan Xiang Oolong tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 5 s 1: 5 s 2: 5 s 3: 7 s 4: 10 s 5: 13 s 6: 15 s 7: 20 s 8: 25 s 9: 30 s 10: 40 s 11: 50 s 12: 1 min 5 s 13: 1 min 20 s 14: 1 min 40 s 15: 2 min -
Phoenix Dan Cong Oolong tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 5 s 1: 5 s 2: 5 s 3: 7 s 4: 10 s 5: 13 s 6: 15 s 7: 20 s 8: 25 s 9: 30 s 10: 40 s 11: 50 s 12: 1 min 13: 1 min 15 s 14: 1 min 30 s 15: 1 min 50 s -
Yiwu Mountain Raw Pu-erh tea · 90 °C · 195 °F
Rinse 10 s 2: 10 s 3: 10 s 4: 10 s 5: 12 s 6: 15 s 7: 18 s 8: 22 s 9: 26 s 10: 30 s 11: 35 s 12: 42 s 13: 50 s 14: 1 min 15: 1 min 15 s 16: 1 min 30 s
Re-steeps (Western)
| Tea | Tea type | Re-steeps (Western) | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yerba Mate | Herbal tea | 7 | 5 min | 3 g |
| Silver Needle (Bai Hao Yin Zhen) | White tea | 5 | 5 min | 3 g |
| Chrysanthemum | Herbal tea | 4 | 4 min | 2 g |
| Jasmine Silver Needle | White tea | 4 | 3 min | 3 g |
| Yunnan Snow Buds | White tea | 4 | 5 min | 3 g |
| White Hair (Shou Mei) | White tea | 4 | 4 min | 4 g |
| Aged Sheng Pu-erh | Pu-erh tea | 4 | 30 s | 2.5 g |
| Fuding White | White tea | 4 | 4 min | 3.5 g |
| Bancha | Green tea | 4 | 2 min | 3 g |
| Tie Guan Yin (Iron Goddess) | Oolong tea | 3 | 2 min | 4 g |
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Why the two columns differ so much
The Western column and the Gong Fu column describe the same leaf and disagree wildly, and the reason is arithmetic. A Western steep uses little leaf in a lot of water for several minutes and takes most of the soluble material out in one pass — a second cup is thinner, a third is usually not worth making. Gong Fu uses several times the leaf in a fraction of the water for seconds at a time, so each infusion removes a small slice and there is plenty left for the next.
So "how many times can I re-steep this?" has no single answer; it has a method-dependent one. The same rolled oolong is a two-cup tea Western-style and a 20-infusion tea in a gaiwan. If the number of cups per gram matters to you, the method matters more than the leaf.
What changes from infusion to infusion
Extraction is not uniform, and the order is consistent enough to predict. Caffeine and the simplest aromatics come out first — published measurements of successive infusions show the great majority of a leaf's caffeine leaving in the earliest steeps — which is why late infusions are noticeably gentler. Aroma peaks early too, often on the first or second infusion. Sweetness, thickness and the mineral, lingering quality that good tea leaves in the throat tend to arrive in the middle of a session and outlast everything else.
This is why serious drinkers rarely rate a tea on its first cup. A tea that is loud immediately and empty by infusion four is a different, lesser thing than one that opens slowly and is still giving something at infusion eight — and only the second kind justifies what good leaf costs.
How to re-steep Western-style without a thin cup
If you are brewing in a mug or a Western pot, three rules recover most of the wasted potential. First, drain the vessel completely — leaf left standing in an inch of water is over-extracting while you drink, and the next cup pays for it. Second, extend each subsequent steep: adding roughly half again to the previous time compensates for the leaf being partly spent. Third, do not let the leaf go cold and wet for hours; re-steep within the session or refrigerate.
Teas that reward this most are large-leaf and lightly processed — whites, rolled oolongs, pu-erh — where the Western re-steep counts in the table sit highest. Fine broken-leaf black teas and most tea bags give essentially everything on the first pass, which is not a defect: they were engineered for exactly one strong, fast cup.
When to stop, and how to tell
The leaf tells you before the table does. Stop when the liquor loses colour and the cup tastes of hot water with a memory of tea; stop earlier if it turns papery or flat, which means you are extracting what is left of the structure rather than the flavour. Wet leaf that has fully opened and gone soft and flat has usually given what it has.
One caution worth stating plainly: wet leaf at room temperature is a food, and it does not keep. Finish a session within a few hours or refrigerate the leaf and use it the next day. Overnight on the counter in a warm kitchen is where re-steeping stops being thrift.
The champions
The longest ladders in this database belong to compressed and aged pu-erh and to tightly rolled oolongs, which reach 20 infusions — a session of an hour or more from a few grams of leaf. Those teas are also the most expensive per gram, and the two facts are related: measured per cup rather than per gram, a 20-infusion oolong is frequently cheaper than a supermarket tea bag.
The table below names them, with each tea's actual infusion count and full ladder from its own record. Every name links to that tea's page, where the complete schedule — rinse, each infusion, both temperature scales and the Western alternative — is laid out in full.
Why tea bags give exactly one cup
A tea bag is engineered against re-steeping. The leaf inside is cut small — fannings and dust — which maximises surface area so that a fixed, small dose extracts nearly completely in two or three minutes with no skill required. That is a genuine achievement of convenience, and it is also why the second bag steep tastes like tinted water: there is almost nothing left to extract.
Whole leaf works the other way. It gives up its solubles gradually because the water has to work through intact structure, which is what makes multiple infusions possible in the first place. So the re-steep counts in this table are a property of leaf grade and processing as much as of tea type, and the single easiest way to get more cups out of the same money is to buy leaf that was never cut.
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