Tea steeping times by variety

Tea is just hot water through dry leaves. The leaves are processed differently per variety - withered, oxidised, fired, fermented - and that processing is what dictates the right water temperature and the right contact time. Almost all "bad tea" people make at home is brewed too hot or brewed too long, and the fix is usually smaller than they expect. What follows is a per-variety reference with the chemistry behind each number, so you can troubleshoot when a tea isn't behaving the way the preset suggests.

The two variables that matter most: temperature and time

Hot water dissolves more compounds out of the leaf - including the ones you don't want. The bitter astringency in over-brewed tea comes mostly from catechins and tannins (polyphenols that extract faster the hotter the water gets), while the sweet umami and floral notes come from amino acids like theanine and from volatile aromatics that are far more delicate. Lower temperatures preserve the aromatics and the theanine; higher temperatures pull caffeine and tannins out faster. Time then amplifies whatever the temperature has already started.

The working rule: the lower the temperature, the longer the steep you can tolerate; the higher the temperature, the shorter the steep must be. McGee summarises the chemistry in detail in On Food and Cooking; the practical version fits on a fridge magnet.

Green tea - 70-80°C, 1-3 minutes

Green tea is unoxidised. The leaves are heat-treated soon after plucking (steamed in the Japanese tradition, pan-fired in the Chinese), which locks in the catechins and the grassy aromatics. Above about 80°C those catechins extract aggressively and the cup turns sharp and bitter. Below 80°C they extract slowly, in proportion with the gentler aromatics, and the result tastes vegetal and clean.

A useful trick from Japanese practice is the yuzamashi, a small pre-cooling vessel: pour boiling water in, wait half a minute, then pour onto the leaves. Use the tea timer for the green-tea preset and pull the cup at two minutes the first time - if it's astringent, you brewed too hot, not too long.

White tea - 80-85°C, 4-7 minutes

White tea is the least processed of the major varieties - usually just plucked, withered, and dried, with no firing or rolling. Silver needle (the unopened bud) and white peony (bud plus a leaf or two) are the canonical examples. Because the leaf is barely altered, the soluble compounds sit deeper inside it and need longer contact time to come out - but the leaf is also delicate, so the water can't be too hot or the result tastes flat and cooked.

The Hilal & Engelhardt (2007) comparison of white, green, and black teas found that white tea's polyphenol profile sits closer to green than to black, but with ratios that reward a slower extraction. White tea also takes multiple steeps gracefully - the second is often equal to the first.

Oolong - 85-95°C, 2-5 minutes Western, 30-90 seconds gongfu

Oolong is the broadest category by far. Partial oxidation can sit anywhere from a green-leaning Tieguanyin (lightly oxidised, floral, green to the eye) to a dark-roasted Da Hong Pao (heavily oxidised and fired, mahogany in the cup, closer to a black). No single number works for all of them. The "right" temperature and time depend on the cultivar and the roast.

Western-style brewing - a teapot, a few grams of leaf, a single multi-minute steep - is the easier introduction. East-Asian gongfu style uses much more leaf in a smaller vessel and many short steeps (30-90 seconds each), unfolding the tea over six or eight pours. Both are valid. If the first cup of an oolong tastes hollow, brew tighter (more leaf, less water) before reaching for a longer time.

Black tea - 90-100°C, 3-5 minutes

Black tea is fully oxidised. The leaves are bruised, allowed to oxidise to completion, then fired. That oxidation has already converted the catechins into the larger theaflavins and thearubigins, which extract more slowly and tolerate near-boiling water without turning harsh. The Assams, Ceylons, and Keemuns of the British tea tradition are designed for exactly this - full boil, four or five minutes, often into milk.

Darjeeling is the well-known exception. The leaves of a first-flush Darjeeling are barely oxidised compared to a typical Assam, and many tea drinkers argue it's closer to an oolong than a true black. Brew it like a black if you want strength, or like an oolong (lower temperature, shorter time) if you want the muscatel character to come through cleanly. Past five minutes, almost any black tea on the shelf will start to taste of tannin.

Pu-erh - 95-100°C, 30 seconds-3 minutes, multiple short steeps

Pu-erh is the post-fermented category - the leaves are processed green, then aged with the help of microbes for years (raw / sheng) or pushed through accelerated wet-piling (ripe / shou). The chemistry is unlike any of the above. Pu-erh tolerates near-boiling water and rewards multiple short steeps far more than a single long one. The first pour is usually a rinse - discarded after fifteen seconds, both to wash the leaf and to wake it up. From there, steeps of 30 seconds to a minute or two unfold a flavour profile that genuinely evolves over six to ten pours.

A young raw pu-erh tastes bright, almost grassy; a well-aged one earthy and mineral. A ripe pu-erh tastes of wet wood and cocoa from the start. Either way, expect to brew it more than once from the same leaves - that's where the chemistry actually lives.

Herbal "teas" - actually tisanes - 100°C, 5-10 minutes

Chamomile, peppermint, rooibos, ginger, hibiscus, lemon verbena - none of these are Camellia sinensis. They aren't tea in the botanical sense, and the rules don't transfer. Most herbal infusions have no tannins to worry about, so they can't really over-steep into bitterness; ten minutes in fully boiling water is fine for almost any of them, and rooibos in particular is nearly impossible to ruin. The time window is generous because nothing in the leaf is going to turn against you the way green tea catechins will. If a herbal tastes weak, the answer is more leaf, not longer time.

Multiple steeps and the gongfu approach

The East-Asian habit of re-steeping the same leaves is one of the quietly transformative things about good tea. The chemistry is straightforward: the first steep extracts mostly the surface compounds, the second pulls from deeper in the leaf as the structure relaxes, and subsequent steeps unfold different ratios of caffeine, tannin, and aromatics. The cup at steep five tastes almost nothing like steep one.

Practically: try this with a mid-grade oolong or pu-erh first, where the evolution is most pronounced. It works less well with cheap tea-bag dust, where the leaf has too much surface area for the slow unfolding to happen. There's a contemplative side to it too - the tea ceremony in China and Japan treats the steeping sequence almost as a meditation in itself.

A practical bottom line

When in doubt, pull the steep early, taste, and re-steep with longer time if the cup is too thin. Hot water through good leaves is forgiving on the short side and unforgiving on the long side - it's much easier to fix a weak cup than a bitter one. For one-tap presets that encode all of this, use the tea timer on this site. And if you're here from the cooking timer cheat sheet, this is the deeper version of the tea section in that article: the numbers are the same, but the why is what makes them adaptable when the tea on your counter doesn't quite match the preset.