Tea Brewing Times

How’s your brewing?

We’re guessing you have a few questions.

If you’ve been following along with our brewing tips the last couple weeks, then you know all about the incredible impact that good brewing has on making your tea even better. Water quality? You’re on it. Brewing temps and heating methods? You’re practically a pro! But brewing times and brewing vessels? There may be some learning yet to be done in these areas…

“How long?”

Did you ever have a tea that you love turn out incredibly bitter? Or find that you can hardly taste it at all? While it could be that you used way too much or too little tea (or that you ate too much chili-garlic sauce before a white tea!), this kind of problem usually goes back to brewing times.

Each tea is different, and you’ll get to know your favorites as you play around with brewing them for different lengths of time. We recommend starting with the times on our packaging. If you want your tea milder the next time, brew it a shorter time.  If you want it stronger, try a longer brew next time (or just put the leaves and brewed tea back together to let them mingle a little longer this time). With a little attention to brewing times, it will all sort itself out pretty quickly.

“What about re-steeping?”

We always recommend to steep our teas twice, even the flavored ones. With flavored teas the first cup will be the primary flavor and the second will be more muted but that is when the other ingredients can come through more. Straight teas (such as our pure, unflavored teas) are especially great for re-steeping.  Usually, the second steeping should be a little longer than the first.

The exception to this is Japanese green tea, which usually does better with a shorter steeping the second (and sometimes also the third) time around.