How to Brew Tea: The Complete Temperature & Time Guide

Three numbers, and only three

Every brewing argument you have ever read comes down to three variables: how hot the water is, how long the leaf sits in it, and how much leaf there is per unit of water. Change one and you must usually change another. Everything else — the kettle, the pot, the ceremony — is a way of controlling those three more precisely.

Temperature decides what comes out of the leaf. Hot water pulls catechins and caffeine quickly; cooler water leaves them behind and favours the amino acids that taste sweet and savoury. That is the entire reason a Japanese Gyokuro is brewed at 60 °C and an Assam at a rolling boil. Time decides how much comes out. Ratio decides how concentrated the result is, and — crucially — how many times you can go back to the same leaves.

The international reference point for all of this is ISO 3103, the standard that defines how tea is prepared for sensory testing: 2 g of leaf per 100 ml of freshly boiling water, six minutes, in a pot of specified dimensions. It exists to make cups comparable in a laboratory, not to make them delicious. It is a useful anchor and a terrible recipe — six minutes of boiling water would flatten most of the teas below.

Temperature, by type

Use these as defaults and let the individual tea override them — the per-tea pages carry the exact figure.

• Green — 80 °C / 175 °F. The exceptions matter: Gyokuro at 60 °C, Hojicha at 90 °C because roasting has already burned off the delicate compounds, and mint-blended greens like Moroccan Mint at a full 100 °C.
• White — 85 °C / 185 °F. Lower than most people expect for a tea that looks so pale, and paired with the longest steep of any type.
• Oolong — 85–93 °C / 185–200 °F. Rolled, green-style oolongs sit at the bottom of that band; roasted Wuyi rock oolongs like Da Hong Pao sit at the top.
• Black — 90–100 °C / 195–212 °F. Breakfast blends and Assams take boiling water. Chinese and Himalayan blacks — Darjeeling, Keemun — are better at 90 °C.
• Pu-erh — 90 °C raw, 100 °C ripe. Ripe (shou) pu-erh is fermented and effectively bulletproof; raw (sheng) is closer to a green tea in temperament.
• Herbal — 95–100 °C / 203–212 °F. With two notable exceptions: Yerba Mate at 70 °C and Lavender at 85 °C.

A stove kettle without a thermometer is not a problem. Boil it, take the lid off, and count: roughly 30 seconds of standing gets you to 95 °C, two minutes to about 85 °C, and four minutes to 80 °C in a typical kitchen. Or pour boiling water into a cold cup first — that alone drops it 5–10 °C.

Time, by type

Note the shape of it. Real tea leaves ask for seconds to low minutes and give you second and third cups; herbal infusions ask for long minutes and are usually finished after one. If you have only ever brewed everything for four minutes, the single biggest improvement available to you is a timer.

Leaf, water and the ratio that hides between them

The Western default across the whole database is 3 g of leaf per 250 ml of water — a ratio of roughly 1:83. Heavier, more voluminous leaves go up: 4 g for Assam and Tie Guan Yin, 5 g for Da Hong Pao, 6 g for Gyokuro. Delicate flowers go down: 1 g for Lavender.

Gong Fu brewing changes the ratio, not the tea. Instead of 3 g in 250 ml, you use 7 g in 100 ml — around 1:14, six times stronger — and compensate by steeping for seconds rather than minutes. Da Hong Pao's Gong Fu schedule starts with a 5-second rinse and then a 5-second first infusion, and it keeps going for twelve more. That is not a different recipe; it is the same three variables, set differently. The Gong Fu vs Western guide covers when it is worth it.

Getting a second cup

Whether a tea re-steeps is mostly a question of how intact the leaf is. Broken, fast-extracting leaf gives you one good cup; whole leaf gives you several.

• Whole-leaf whites and oolongs are the champions. Silver Needle runs to six Western infusions and ten Gong Fu ones.
• Pu-erh is built for it. Aged Sheng Pu-erh carries twenty Gong Fu infusions after two rinses.
• Breakfast blends give you one and a half. A second English Breakfast steep at 5 minutes is drinkable; a third is water.

Add roughly 30 seconds to each subsequent Western steep, and keep the wet leaves out of standing water between rounds. The re-steeping chart has the full count per tea.

The five mistakes that cost the most

1. Boiling water on green tea. The single most common one, and the reason people believe they dislike green tea.
2. Four minutes on everything. A four-minute oolong is a bitter oolong; a four-minute pu-erh is undrinkable.
3. Not enough leaf, then over-steeping to compensate. Under-dosing pulls astringency without body. Add leaf, shorten time.
4. Leaving the leaves in the cup. Extraction does not stop when the tea is "done".
5. Skipping the rinse on compressed tea. Pu-erh and aged oolong need a 10-second wake-up pour that you throw away.

Now go deeper

Browse by type: green · black · white · oolong · pu-erh · herbal

Brew along: the tea timer for a single steep, the Gong Fu timer for a full ladder. Or print the steeping chart and the temperature guide and stick them on the cupboard door.