Tea brewing chart: temperature and time by type

Most cups of tea go wrong for one of three reasons: the water was too hot, the leaves sat too long, or there simply were not enough of them. Across the 140 teas we map the pattern is consistent — black, herbal and pu-erh want water at or near the boil, green and white want it clearly cooler, and almost everything finishes between two and five minutes.

The chart, by type

Black tea: 95°C, 3 to 4 minutes, about 2.5 to 3 g per cup. The most forgiving family on the list. The one thing it punishes is a long steep, which turns brisk into harsh.

Green tea: 80°C, around 2 minutes, about 3 g. This is where most mistakes happen. Our greens run from 60°C for a shaded gyokuro up to 95°C for a roasted hojicha, so check what you actually have before defaulting to 80.

White tea: 85°C, 3 to 4 minutes, about 3 to 3.5 g. Delicate in flavour but not in dosage — white tea is fluffy, so a cup takes more leaf by volume than it looks like it should.

Oolong: 90°C, 2 to 3 minutes, about 3 g. The widest family in the cup. A green, floral oolong and a dark, roasted one behave almost like different drinks, and both reward several short infusions over one long one.

Pu-erh and dark tea: 95 to 100°C, 3 to 4 minutes, about 3 to 4 g. Boiling water is correct here. A quick rinse — pour, swirl, discard within a few seconds — wakes up a compressed cake before the first real infusion.

Yellow tea: 80°C, 2 to 3 minutes, about 3 g. Rare, gently sweet, and handled like a green tea with a little more patience.

Herbal infusions: 95°C, 5 minutes or more, about 2 g. The opposite of green tea. Chamomile, ginger, hibiscus and rooibos need real heat and real time to give anything up, and they do not turn bitter when you forget them.

Chai blends: 95 to 100°C, 5 to 7 minutes, about 3 g. Here the spices, not the tea, set the clock.

Two that break the chart

Matcha is not steeped at all. You whisk about 2 g of powder into 75°C water for roughly thirty seconds and drink the leaf itself rather than an infusion of it. That is also why it sits so high on the caffeine scale — the honest caffeine ladder puts it against everything else.

Yerba mate has no steeping time, and no grams-per-cup that means anything. You fill the gourd to taste, pour water around 75°C over the leaves, and refill the same yerba through many rounds. Any chart that hands mate five minutes and six grams is quietly inventing a number to fill a column.

Getting there without a thermometer

Water loses roughly 5 to 10°C every time you pour it between vessels. Boil, pour into a cold jug, then into the pot, and you land near 80°C — close enough for green tea. Leaving an open kettle to stand for two minutes gets you to a similar place.

Add leaf, not minutes

If a cup tastes weak, the fix is more leaf, not more time. Extra minutes mostly extract tannins, which read as bitterness and astringency rather than body. Extra leaf gives you strength while keeping the balance the tea was built around.

Two habits decide whether any of this works. Use freshly drawn water, because repeatedly boiled water tastes flat, and keep the cup covered while it steeps so the heat stays in and the aromatics do not leave with the steam. None of it survives badly kept leaf, though: the five enemies of fresh tea will undo a perfect brew. To work through the catalogue family by family, every tea we map carries its own temperature and time.