To brew loose leaf tea: put about a teaspoon of leaves per cup into an infuser or straight into a mug, pour hot water over them, wait 2–5 minutes depending on the type, then remove the leaves and drink. That's the whole process.
If you've only ever used tea bags, the one real change is that you now control two things the bag decided for you: how much leaf goes in, and when it comes out.
What you need to start
Less than you'd think. You can brew loose leaf with a mug and a spoon if you don't mind a few leaves at the bottom.
- The leaves. Start with one tea you're curious about rather than a sampler. Loose leaf means exactly what it sounds like: whole or broken tea leaves, sold unpackaged by weight, instead of ground fine and sealed into a bag.
- Something to hold them (optional). A mesh basket that sits in your mug is the easiest, and costs a few dollars. A small strainer you pour through works just as well.
- Hot water. Any kettle. A pot on the stove is fine.
That's it. No scale, no special pot, no thermometer.
How much tea per cup?
About one teaspoon per 8 oz cup. Adjust from there — a bit more for big fluffy leaves that don't pack down, a bit less for tightly rolled ones that expand a lot.
Whatever spoon you use, use the same one every time. Then you'll know exactly what you did when a cup turns out well, and you can do it again.
If your tea tastes weak, add leaf before you add time. More leaf makes tea stronger; more time mostly makes it bitter. That's the single most useful thing to know starting out, and it's the opposite of how most people troubleshoot.
How hot should the water be?
Hotter for dark teas, cooler for delicate ones. Without a thermometer:
- Black tea, pu-erh, herbal: full boil. Pour straight from the kettle.
- Oolong: just off the boil. Wait about 30 seconds.
- Green and white tea: noticeably cooler. Let the kettle stand 2–3 minutes after boiling, or add a splash of cold water.
Green tea is the one that punishes you for skipping this. Boiling water on green leaves is the most common reason a beginner's green tea tastes harsh and bitter, and it has nothing to do with the tea being bad.
How long do you steep loose leaf tea?
Here's the whole chart. Start at the short end:
- Green tea: 1–3 minutes
- White tea: 2–5 minutes
- Oolong tea: 3–5 minutes
- Black tea: 3–5 minutes
- Pu-erh: 3–5 minutes
- Herbal (chamomile, peppermint, rooibos): 5–7 minutes or more
Herbals are the exception to everything — they're not made from tea leaves at all, so they can't really be over-steeped. If yours tastes thin, give it longer.
Take the leaves out
This is the step tea bags trained you to skip, and the one that matters most.
Leaves left sitting in the water keep extracting. Past a few minutes, that means tannins — the compounds responsible for the dry, puckering bitterness of a forgotten cup. Most of what you actually want has already come out in the first several minutes of a steep.1 Everything after that is diminishing returns and rising bitterness.
So lift the basket out, or pour the tea off the leaves into another cup. Don't leave them in while you drink.
Your leaves are good for another cup
Don't throw them out after one steep. Most loose leaf — especially oolong and pu-erh, and to a lesser extent green and black — will give you a second cup and often a third. Add about a minute to each successive steep, since the leaves give up flavor more slowly as they go.
This is a large part of why loose leaf is less expensive per cup than it looks on the shelf.
Putting it together
Teaspoon of leaves. Right temperature. Set a timer. Take the leaves out. Reuse them.
The timer is worth being deliberate about at the start, because the difference between a 2-minute and a 4-minute green tea is dramatic and easy to lose track of — that's exactly what the timer in our app is for. After a few weeks you'll stop needing it, which is the point: these numbers become a habit faster than you'd expect, and then you're just making tea.