How to Brew Tea Properly: Temperatures, Times, and Timers

Most "bad tea" isn't bad tea — it's boiling water poured over delicate leaves and left to stew. Tea is an extraction, like coffee: temperature controls what comes out of the leaf, and time controls how much. Get those two numbers right and even a supermarket bag makes a cup worth drinking; get them wrong and a thirty-dollar tin tastes like a mouthful of bitterness.

Why temperature matters so much

Tea leaves contain both the flavors you want and the tannins you don't. Hotter water extracts everything — including bitterness. Delicate teas (green, white) release their character at 70–85 °C; boiling water scorches them into astringent soup in thirty seconds. Robust teas (black, herbal) need the heat to release their depth. It's not snobbery — it's solubility.

The numbers

• Green: 70–80 °C, 2–3 minutes. Water just below a simmer.
• White: 75–80 °C, 2–4 minutes. The most fragile leaf.
• Oolong: 85–90 °C, 3–5 minutes — and it loves multiple infusions.
• Black: 95–100 °C, 3–5 minutes. A full boil is fine; the clock is the discipline.
• Herbal: 100 °C, 5–7 minutes. Flowers and fruit need heat and time.
• Rooibos: 95–100 °C, 4–6 minutes. Naturally sweet and nearly impossible to ruin.

Try it — pick your tea, then run the steep timer:

How to hit the temperature without a thermometer

• 70–80 °C: bring to a boil, then wait 3–4 minutes (or let it sit covered for 2).
• 85–90 °C: wait about 2 minutes after boiling (or stop the kettle at the first rumbling — steam rising, no bubbles).
• 95–100 °C: fresh rolling boil, used immediately.

Never reboil water for delicate teas — reboiled water is deoxygenated and flat, which makes tea taste dull.

Leaf, cup, and the second steep

Use about 2 g of leaf per 200 ml cup — a heaped teaspoon for most loose-leaf teas, one bag for bagged (bags are already dosed). Steep with a lid or cover to keep the heat in, and pull the leaves out when the timer fires: leaves left in the cup keep extracting, so a "convenient" tea that steeps while you answer email is a bitter tea.

Good whole-leaf teas — oolong especially — are built for multiple infusions. After the first steep, add 30 seconds each time: the second and third cups are often the best. If your tea is bitter, it's rarely the leaf; it's the temperature, the time, or both.

The key takeaway: tea is a two-number recipe — temperature for the leaf, time for the cup. Green wants cool water and a short clock; black wants a boil and discipline; and when in doubt, under-steep and add time, not the other way around.

Coffee follows the same extraction logic — the coffee ratio guide has the numbers for the other hot drink. And for cooking with tea (brines, poaching, desserts), ask the chef for a recipe that uses what you have.