Charts
Tea water temperature guide
Tea in this database is brewed between 60 °C (140 °F) and 100 °C (212 °F). The table below turns that range into bands you can identify by looking into the kettle — no thermometer needed — and lists which of the 176 teas belong in each one.
Water temperature bands — what you see, and what to brew in them
| Water stage | What you see in the kettle | Teas | Teas brewed here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60–69 °C · 140–156 °FBarely warm | No movement, no bubbles, only a faint haze on the surface. Boiled water left standing about ten minutes, or half boiling water and half cold. | 1Green tea (1) |
|
| 70–74 °C · 158–165 °FSteam, no bubbles | Steady steam rises; the water is still and silent. Roughly five minutes off the boil, or one pour between two cool cups. | 5Green tea (3) · Herbal tea (2) |
|
| 75–79 °C · 167–174 °FShrimp eyes | The first pinhead bubbles cling to the bottom of the kettle and stay there. No sound yet. | 1Green tea (1) |
|
| 80–84 °C · 176–183 °FShrimp eyes rising | Small bubbles detach and drift upward one at a time; a faint hiss begins. | 33Green tea (30) · White tea (2) · Herbal tea (1) |
|
| 85–89 °C · 185–192 °FCrab eyes | Bubbles the size of a match head rise in loose strings; the kettle is clearly audible. | 26White tea (10) · Herbal tea (7) · Oolong tea (6) · Pu-erh tea (2) · Green tea (1) |
|
| 90–94 °C · 194–201 °FFish eyes | Large bubbles rise in continuous chains and the surface starts to move. The kettle is at its loudest just before this settles. | 48Oolong tea (23) · Black tea (10) · Pu-erh tea (8) · Green tea (3) · White tea (3) · Herbal tea (1) |
|
| 95–100 °C · 203–212 °FRolling boil | The whole surface turns over in waves and the noise drops. Pour immediately — repeatedly boiled water tastes flat. | 62Herbal tea (32) · Black tea (23) · Pu-erh tea (6) · Green tea (1) |
|
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Named teas across each type’s range
Eight teas per type, sampled evenly from the coolest to the hottest, so you can see how wide a category really is.
Green tea 40 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gyokuro | 60 °C · 140 °F | 2 min | 6 g |
| Jasmine Green | 80 °C · 175 °F | 2 min | 3 g |
| Green Earl Grey | 80 °C · 175 °F | 2 min | 3 g |
| Mao Feng | 80 °C · 175 °F | 1 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Enshi Yulu | 80 °C · 175 °F | 2 min | 3 g |
| Yingshan Yunwu | 80 °C · 175 °F | 2 min | 3 g |
| Liu An Gua Pian | 82 °C · 180 °F | 1 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Moroccan Mint | 100 °C · 212 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
White tea 15 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| White Earl Grey | 80 °C · 176 °F | 3 min | 3.5 g |
| Jasmine Silver Needle | 85 °C · 185 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
| White Peony (Bai Mudan) | 85 °C · 185 °F | 4 min | 3 g |
| White Hair | 85 °C · 185 °F | 4 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Moonlight White | 88 °C · 190 °F | 3 min | 4 g |
| Kenya Purple White | 88 °C · 190 °F | 3 min | 4.5 g |
| White Hair (Shou Mei) | 90 °C · 195 °F | 4 min | 4 g |
| Malawi Antlers | 90 °C · 195 °F | 3 min 30 s | 4 g |
Oolong tea 29 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oriental Beauty | 85 °C · 185 °F | 2 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Li Shan (Pear Mountain) | 88 °C · 190 °F | 2 min | 3 g |
| Coconut Oolong | 90 °C · 195 °F | 2 min 30 s | 4 g |
| Phoenix Dan Cong | 90 °C · 195 °F | 1 min | 4 g |
| Fo Shou (Buddha's Hand) | 90 °C · 195 °F | 2 min | 4 g |
| Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) | 93 °C · 200 °F | 1 min 30 s | 5 g |
| Shui Xian (Water Sprite) | 93 °C · 200 °F | 1 min 30 s | 5 g |
| Shui Jin Gui (Golden Water Turtle) | 93 °C · 200 °F | 1 min 30 s | 5 g |
Pu-erh tea 16 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moonlight White Pu-erh | 85 °C · 185 °F | 50 s | 2.5 g |
| Menghai 7542 | 90 °C · 195 °F | 40 s | 3 g |
| Sheng Pu-erh (Raw) | 90 °C · 195 °F | 45 s | 2.5 g |
| Bing Dao (Ice Island) | 90 °C · 195 °F | 35 s | 2.5 g |
| Purple Bud Pu-erh | 90 °C · 195 °F | 40 s | 2.5 g |
| Shou Pu-erh (Ripe) | 100 °C · 212 °F | 1 min | 3 g |
| Golden Buds Ripe | 100 °C · 212 °F | 40 s | 2.5 g |
| Bamboo Pu-erh | 100 °C · 212 °F | 55 s | 3.5 g |
Black tea 33 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darjeeling | 90 °C · 195 °F | 2 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Sikkim | 90 °C · 195 °F | 2 min 30 s | 3 g |
| Lapsang Souchong | 93 °C · 200 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
| Prince of Wales | 96 °C · 205 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
| Chocolate Black Tea | 98 °C · 208 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
| English Breakfast | 100 °C · 212 °F | 4 min | 3 g |
| Cinnamon Black Tea | 100 °C · 212 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
| Java Black | 100 °C · 212 °F | 3 min | 3 g |
Herbal tea 43 teas
| Tea | Water temperature | Steep time | Leaf per 250 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yerba Mate | 70 °C · 158 °F | 5 min | 3 g |
| Lemon Verbena | 85 °C · 185 °F | 4 min | 1 g |
| Chamomile | 95 °C · 203 °F | 6 min | 3 g |
| Rooibos | 100 °C · 212 °F | 6 min | 3 g |
| Masala Chai Rooibos | 100 °C · 212 °F | 7 min | 3 g |
| Cardamom | 100 °C · 212 °F | 10 min | 1 g |
| Passionflower | 100 °C · 212 °F | 12 min | 2 g |
| Corn Silk Tea | 100 °C · 212 °F | 12 min | 3 g |
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Reading the kettle instead of a thermometer
Long before thermometers, brewers judged water by the bubbles rising in it, and the vocabulary that survives is unusually precise. In a clear or open vessel the first stage is faint steam with no bubbles at all — the water is somewhere in the seventies Celsius and suits the most delicate green teas. Then come tiny bubbles clinging to the base, traditionally "shrimp eyes", followed by strings of larger bubbles rising in chains, "crab eyes", and finally rolling, noisy "fish eyes" as the surface breaks into a full boil.
The stages are approximate and depend on your vessel, but they are far more reliable than guessing, and they are free. The other free method is the cooling curve: water off a rolling boil loses heat quickly at first, and pouring it once between two room-temperature vessels drops it noticeably before it ever reaches the leaf. If you brew the same tea in the same kettle every morning, two or three sessions with any thermometer will calibrate your eye permanently.
Why delicate teas cannot take heat
Green and white teas are barely oxidised, and their character comes from amino acids — theanine above all — that dissolve readily at moderate temperatures. The compounds that make tea bitter and drying, the catechins and the caffeine, need more heat and more time. Brew a shaded Japanese green at 60 °C (140 °F)–80 °C (175 °F) and you extract mostly the sweet, savoury fraction; brew the identical leaf at boiling and you extract everything at once, and the bitterness buries the rest.
This is the single most common brewing error, and it is invisible while it happens. Nothing looks wrong: the water is just hot water. The cup is where you find out, and by then the leaf is spent. If you only ever change one thing about how you make tea, let it be that green tea gets water that has been off the boil for a couple of minutes.
Why other teas demand boiling
Fully oxidised black teas, roasted oolongs, aged pu-erh and dried herbal material all need aggressive heat to open. Compressed pu-erh in particular has to rehydrate before it releases anything, which is why it is brewed at or near 100 °C (212 °F) and often given a quick rinse first. Herbal infusions of flowers, bark, roots and dried fruit contain no tannins to turn harsh, so boiling water carries no penalty and materially improves extraction.
Rooibos, chamomile and hibiscus are the clearest examples: brewed at green-tea temperature they taste like weak, slightly sweet water. The instruction to "never use boiling water on tea" is advice for one end of this chart that got repeated at the other end, where it does real damage.
Kettles, altitude and the numbers your appliance shows
Variable-temperature kettles are convenient and mostly honest, but their sensor sits in the base, not in the water column, and a couple of degrees of drift is normal. It matters least where the range is wide and most at the delicate end, so treat a kettle preset as an approximation of the band, not a guarantee of a number.
Altitude changes the top of the scale outright: water boils at roughly 93–95 °C at 2,000 m and lower still higher up, so "boiling" in the mountains is genuinely cooler than 100 °C (212 °F) and long-steeping black teas and herbal infusions may need extra time to compensate. Nothing changes at the delicate end, because you are cooling the water anyway.
A practical routine
Boil once, then brew in temperature order if you are making more than one tea: black or herbal straight off the boil, oolong and pu-erh a minute later, white after that, green last. One kettle, one boil, four correct temperatures, and no reboiling — which also avoids the flat taste of water that has been boiled repeatedly and lost dissolved air.
Preheat the pot or gaiwan with a splash of hot water and discard it. A cold vessel steals several degrees from the brew the moment you pour, and at the delicate end that is enough to move you out of the band you aimed for. Every tea page on this site carries its own exact temperature in both scales, and the app holds the whole schedule for you.
The other end of the scale: cold brewing
Everything above assumes hot water, but the same leaves brewed in cold water for six to twelve hours in the refrigerator produce a completely different cup. At refrigerator temperature the bitter catechins and much of the caffeine barely dissolve, while sweetness and aroma accumulate slowly, so a green tea that would be unforgiving at 100 °C (212 °F) becomes almost impossible to ruin. Use roughly the same leaf dose as the chart gives per 250 ml, leave it overnight, and strain in the morning.
This is worth knowing precisely because temperature is the variable this page is about. Hot brewing trades speed for risk; cold brewing trades twelve hours for near-total forgiveness. Both are legitimate, and the teas that suffer most from overheated water — delicate greens, silver-needle whites, high-mountain oolongs — are exactly the ones that reward the cold treatment best.
Use it, don't just read it
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