How long to steep tea, by leaf

Pick your tea and it counts the steep, then rings before it turns bitter. The temperature matters as much as the minutes, so both are on every button.

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How to brew loose leaf tea in three steps

Boil it, then let it fall

Only black and herbal tea want water straight off the boil. For green and white, boil the kettle and then wait – about two minutes in an open pot gets you from 100 °C to roughly 80. A splash of cold water does the same job faster and costs nothing but a little dilution.
One rounded teaspoon per cup

About 2 g of leaf to a 200 ml cup, and a little more for the big leaves that barely fill a spoon – white tea and chamomile are mostly air. Pour the water on, start the timer as the last of it goes in, and leave it alone.
Take the leaf out when it rings

This is the step the timer exists for. Lift the infuser or strain it off the moment the alarm sounds – tea left sitting on its leaves does not keep getting stronger, it starts getting bitter, and there is no way back from that.

Tea steeping times and water temperatures

For one rounded teaspoon of loose leaf in a 200 ml cup, poured from water at the temperature given. A bag is faster than any of these – it holds broken leaf with far more surface in the water – so it has a row of its own at the bottom.

1 min Pale straw. Coloured water.
2 min Light gold. Thin but drinkable.
3 min Amber. Tea, without milk.
4 min Deep red-brown. Takes milk.
5 min Dark. Drying, and past its best.

Water temperature and steeping time for each kind of tea
Tea	Water	Steep
White, silver needle	75–80 °C	4–5 min
Green, sencha	70–80 °C	1–2 min
Green, gunpowder	80 °C	2–3 min
Oolong	90 °C	3–4 min
Black, darjeeling	90 °C	3 min
Black, assam	95–100 °C	4–5 min
Pu‑erh	100 °C	3–4 min
Rooibos	100 °C	5–7 min
Chamomile	100 °C	5–7 min
Peppermint	100 °C	5–7 min
Tea bag, black	100 °C	2–3 min

A breakfast blend is an assam row: English and Irish breakfast are blends built on strong assam-style black tea, and four to five minutes at a rolling boil is what they are made for. Earl Grey is a black tea with bergamot on it and follows whichever base it was blended from – usually three to four minutes.

Green and white tea are the rows to get right, and the temperature is the half that catches people out. Both are unoxidised, both give up their tannin fast, and both are ruined by water straight from the kettle before the clock has anything to say about it. If your green tea has always tasted harsh, it is far more likely to be the water than the two minutes.

Herbal infusions are the opposite and can be left almost indefinitely. There is no tea leaf in a chamomile or a peppermint, so there is no tannin to pull out – the range says five to seven minutes because that is when it stops getting better, not when it starts getting worse.

Stronger tea, not longer tea

Strength and bitterness come from different places, and treating them as one dial is the mistake this page is mostly about. The flavour you want dissolves out in the first couple of minutes; the tannins that dry your mouth keep coming for as long as the leaf is in the water.

So a weak cup is a leaf problem. Add another half teaspoon and keep the time the same, and you get a stronger tea that still tastes like tea. Add two more minutes instead and you get the same strength with a bitter edge that milk can only partly hide – which is, not coincidentally, why so much tea is drunk with milk.

Why the temperature is on the button

Hotter water pulls everything out faster, including the parts you would rather leave behind. Black tea is fully oxidised and can take a rolling boil; green and white cannot, and at 100 °C they turn harsh in well under the time the table gives them.

No kettle thermometer needed. Boil it and wait: about two minutes in an open pot drops it to roughly 80 °C, one minute to about 90. Or pour a fifth of the cup as cold water first and fill up from the kettle, which lands in the same place and is quicker.

Bags, mugs and second infusions

A bag holds broken leaf, which has far more surface in the water than whole leaf does, so it brews in about half the time – two to three minutes for a standard black bag, and the string is not a handle for leaving it in.

Good loose leaf will give you a second cup, and sometimes a third. Use the same leaf, add thirty seconds to a minute, and expect a different cup rather than a weaker one: oolong in particular is often better the second time. A bag will not do this, and neither will anything that has already sat too long.

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Questions about brewing tea

How long should you steep tea?

Two minutes for green, three for oolong, four for black and five to seven for herbal infusions. A black tea bag is faster than loose black tea – two to three minutes – because the leaf in it is broken up.

How long do you leave a tea bag in?

Two to three minutes for a standard black tea bag in a mug, then take it out. Leaving it in does not make the tea stronger in any useful sense; it makes it more bitter, and the difference is easy to taste once you have stopped doing it for a week.

Why is my tea bitter?

Either it steeped too long or the water was too hot, and for green tea it is usually the water. Tannins keep dissolving for as long as the leaf sits there, and they come out faster the hotter the water is. Use the temperature in the table, set the timer, and take the leaf out when it rings.

Does water temperature really matter for tea?

For green and white tea, more than the time does. They are unoxidised and turn harsh at boiling point no matter how briefly they brew, so the water wants to be around 75 to 80 °C – about two minutes of waiting after the kettle clicks off. Black and herbal teas are fine straight from the boil.

How much tea per cup?

One rounded teaspoon, about 2 g, to a 200 ml cup. Go up a little for the bulky leaves that are mostly air, like white tea and chamomile flowers. If the cup is weak, this is the number to change – not the time.

Can you reuse tea leaves?

Whole leaf tea, yes: a second infusion with the same leaves and thirty seconds to a minute longer is a normal part of drinking oolong and pu-erh, and it tastes different rather than thinner. Tea bags do not work this way, and neither does anything left standing for an hour first.