Posted by Marco Graham on Nov 2nd 2026
How to Make Tea
✿ Start Here
How to Make Tea: A Simple Guide to a Better Cup
Making tea is easy. Making tea well takes about four decisions: what leaf, how much, how hot, and how long. Get those right and an ordinary tea tastes remarkable. Get them wrong and even the finest leaf tastes flat or bitter. Here is the whole process, start to finish.
What You Need
Loose leaf tea. Whole leaves have room to unfurl and release flavor gradually. Most bagged tea is made from the dust and fannings left after the good leaf is sorted out, which is why it brews fast, brews harsh, and tastes the same every time.
Fresh water. Cold, freshly drawn water holds more dissolved oxygen, and that genuinely affects how a cup tastes. Water that has been sitting in the kettle since yesterday brews a duller tea.
Something to hold the leaf. A roomy infuser basket, a teapot with a built-in strainer, or simply a mug and a fine mesh strainer to pour through. Avoid cramped tea balls. Leaves that cannot expand cannot give you their flavor.
A kettle you trust. A variable-temperature kettle takes all the guesswork out of green and white tea. A regular kettle works fine too, as long as you are willing to let the water stand for a minute or two. Whatever you use, keep it clean. See how to clean and descale a kettle, because limescale really does change how tea tastes.
✿ The Method
How to Make Tea, Step by Step
This works for any loose leaf tea. Only the temperature and the timer change from one type to the next.
1. Heat the water
Bring fresh cold water to the temperature your tea wants. Black and herbal want a full boil. Green, white and oolong want cooler water. Boiling water scalds delicate leaf and turns it bitter within seconds.
2. Warm the vessel
Swirl a little hot water in the pot or mug and tip it out. A cold pot can pull the brewing temperature down by fifteen degrees, which matters more than most people realize.
3. Measure the leaf
Roughly one heaped teaspoon, or two to three grams, per eight-ounce cup. Fluffy leaves need more spoons than dense ones, which is why a scale beats a spoon.
4. Pour and time it
Pour the water over the leaf, not the other way around, and start a timer. Guessing the steep is the single most common reason a good tea tastes bad.
5. Strain and taste
Lift the infuser out or pour the tea off the leaf the moment the time is up. Tea left sitting on the leaf keeps extracting and turns astringent.
6. Steep it again
Most quality loose leaf gives you two or three more cups. Add thirty seconds or so to each subsequent steep. The second is often the best one.
Water Temperature and Steeping Time by Tea Type
Black tea, 205°F to 212°F (96–100°C), 3 to 5 minutes. Robust and forgiving. If it tastes harsh, shorten the steep before you reach for milk. More in our black tea guide, or browse black tea.
Green tea, 160°F to 180°F (71–82°C), 1 to 3 minutes. The most temperature-sensitive category by a distance. Full walkthrough in how to brew green tea.
White tea, 175°F to 185°F (79–85°C), 4 to 5 minutes. Delicate in flavor but happy with a long, gentle steep. Browse white tea.
Oolong, 185°F to 205°F (85–96°C), 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how heavily it is oxidized. Rolled oolongs reward repeated short steeps more than any other style.
Herbal and fruit infusions, 212°F (100°C), 5 to 10 minutes. These are not made from the tea plant, so there is no leaf to scald and no real risk of over-steeping. Browse herbal tea.
If you only remember one line: delicate leaf, cooler water, shorter time.
✿ Avoid These
Five Mistakes That Ruin a Cup
Boiling water on green tea. The most common mistake in the western kitchen. It cooks the leaf and produces a bitter, grassy cup that people then blame on the tea.
Leaving the bag or infuser in. Tea does not stop brewing because you stopped paying attention. Take the leaf out.
Re-boiling the same water repeatedly. It flattens the water and the cup tastes noticeably duller.
Under-leafing and over-steeping to compensate. Weak tea brewed long is astringent, not strong. Use more leaf and less time instead.
Squeezing the bag or pressing the leaves. That last bitter drop is bitter for a reason. Let it drain on its own.
✿ Questions
How to Make Tea FAQ
How much tea should I use per cup?
One heaped teaspoon, or two to three grams, per eight ounces of water is the standard starting point. Leaf density changes that considerably. See how much loose leaf tea per cup for the detail.
Should I pour water on the tea, or tea into the water?
Water onto the leaf, always. The pouring action agitates the leaves and gives you an even extraction from the first second.
Do I really need a thermometer?
No. Boil the kettle, then let it stand: about one minute off the boil gets you near 205°F, three minutes near 185°F, and five minutes near 175°F in a typical kitchen. A variable-temperature kettle simply saves you the waiting.
Can I make tea with milk?
Yes, and it suits robust black tea best. Brew the tea properly first and add milk at the end. Our English Breakfast guide covers the order-of-operations debate in more detail than it probably deserves.
What is the difference between steeping and brewing?
In everyday use they mean the same thing. Steeping technically refers to soaking the leaf; brewing describes the whole process. How to steep tea goes through the timings for each type.
How long does loose leaf tea keep?
Around a year for black and oolong, six to eight months for green and white, kept airtight, cool, dark and away from anything strongly scented. Tea absorbs smells from its surroundings with alarming enthusiasm.
Better Leaf Makes This Easy
Every blend we sell is packed in small batches to order rather than sitting in a warehouse, so the leaf you brew still has its aromatic oils intact. That does more for your cup than any gadget.