A notebook for steeping tea by weight, water and time.
Reference tables for each tea type, a timer that knows the temperatures, and the words tasters use when they write a cup down. Nothing to sign up for; the page works offline.
Steeping tables
Starting points, not rules. Western figures are per 240 ml cup; gongfu figures are per 100 ml vessel. Weigh the leaf if you can — a teaspoon of rolled oolong and a teaspoon of loose white tea differ by roughly threefold.
| Tea | Water | Western · 240 ml | Gongfu · 100 ml | Re-steeps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White — silver needle, bai mu dan | 75–85 °C · 167–185 °F | 3 g · 3–4 min | 5 g · 30–45 s | 4–6 |
| Green, Chinese — longjing, mao feng | 75–80 °C · 167–176 °F | 3 g · 2–3 min | 4 g · 15–30 s | 3–4 |
| Green, Japanese — sencha | 70–80 °C · 158–176 °F | 4 g / 200 ml · 60–90 s | 5 g · 45 s (kyusu) | 2–3 |
| Oolong, green / rolled — tieguanyin, high-mountain | 85–90 °C · 185–194 °F | 3 g · 3 min | 6 g · 20–30 s | 6–8 |
| Oolong, roasted / dark — yancha, dong ding | 90–95 °C · 194–203 °F | 3 g · 3 min | 6 g · 15–25 s | 6–8 |
| Black — Assam, Keemun, Ceylon | 90–100 °C · 194–212 °F | 3 g · 3–4 min | 5 g · 10–20 s | 4–6 |
| Pu-erh, raw — sheng | 85–95 °C · 185–203 °F | 3 g · 3 min | 6 g · 10–20 s, rinse first | 8–12 |
| Pu-erh, ripe — shou | 95–100 °C · 203–212 °F | 3 g · 4 min | 7 g · 10–20 s, rinse first | 8–12 |
| Herbal infusion — chamomile, rooibos (not tea) | 100 °C · 212 °F | 4 g · 5–7 min | — | 1–2 |
Gyokuro and other shaded Japanese greens sit lower still, 50–60 °C for about two minutes. Broken-leaf and bagged black tea brews faster than the whole-leaf figures above: try 2–3 minutes.
Temperature & timer
Choose the leaf and the method; the tool fills in water temperature, leaf quantity and a steep time, and lengthens each later steep. Nudge the time if your leaf wants it.
Tasting vocabulary
The point of the words is consistency: use the same term for the same sensation from one notebook entry to the next, and patterns appear.
Structure
- Body
- The weight of the liquor on the tongue, from thin to thick; oily or syrupy at the heavy end.
- Astringency
- The drying, puckering grip of tannins. A little gives structure; too much reads as harsh.
- Brisk
- Lively, bright and slightly astringent — the classic praise for a good breakfast black tea.
- Smooth
- Low astringency and an even texture; often a well-roasted oolong or a rested ripe pu-erh.
- Tannic
- Dominated by astringency and bitterness. Usually a temperature or time fault before a leaf fault.
Aroma & flavour
- Vegetal
- Cut grass, spinach, steamed greens. Expected in green tea; a fault in black.
- Marine
- Seaweed, brine and umami richness, typical of shaded Japanese greens.
- Floral
- Orchid, lilac, honeysuckle — the signature of lightly oxidised oolong and high-grown black tea.
- Malty
- Bread crust and malted grain; strong in Assam and many ripe pu-erh.
- Muscatel
- A grape-like, wine-adjacent aroma prized in second-flush Darjeeling.
- Roasted
- Toast, char and chestnut from firing. Can complement the leaf or mask it.
- Mineral
- A stony, wet-rock impression more felt than tasted; associated with rock oolong (yancha).
- Honeyed
- Sweetness without sugar — ripe fruit or beeswax — often from leafhopper-bitten oolong or aged white tea.
Finish & the leaf
- Finish
- What remains after swallowing, and for how long. A long finish is generally a sign of quality.
- Hui gan
- “Returning sweetness”: a sweetness that rises in the throat seconds after a bitter or astringent sip.
- Liquor
- The brewed tea itself, judged for colour and clarity as well as taste.
- Nose
- Aroma taken from the cup, or from the lid of the gaiwan, before tasting.
- Wet leaf
- The opened, steeped leaf. Its aroma, colour and evenness describe processing and storage.
- Flush
- A harvest period. First flush (spring) is lighter and greener; second flush is fuller and rounder.
Three short guides
Open one at a time. Each is a page from the notebook, short enough to read while the kettle heats.
iJudging water temperature without a thermometer
Most kettles boil at 100 °C and offer nothing in between, so the useful skill is estimating temperature by eye and by waiting. Watch the kettle with the lid off. Around 70–80 °C, bubbles the size of a pinhead cling to the base and begin to rise in strings — older Chinese texts call this shrimp eyes. Between 80 and 90 °C the bubbles grow to fish eyes and rise steadily, and the sound changes from a hiss to a low rumble. A full rolling boil is 100 °C at sea level; a little less at altitude.
If you have already boiled, cooling is predictable. A litre in an open kettle loses roughly 5 °C in the first minute and more slowly after that. Pouring into a cold cup or pot drops it by 5–10 °C at once, so rinse the vessel with hot water first: it evens out that drop and makes the tables more honest.
On water itself: fresh, cold, moderately soft water brews the clearest cup. Distilled water tastes flat; very hard water dulls aroma and leaves a film on black tea. Water that has stood in the kettle all day is not unsafe, only stale — pour it out and start again.
iiWestern and gongfu: two ratios, one leaf
The two methods in the tables are not competing schools; they are two ratios. Western brewing uses a little leaf — about 3 g to 240 ml — and a long steep of two to five minutes, giving one or two full cups from a single dose. Gongfu brewing uses a lot of leaf in a small vessel — 5 to 7 g in a 100 ml gaiwan — and steeps of seconds, repeated many times.
Neither is correct. Western brewing suits breakfast, herbal blends and teas you already know; the long steep flattens a tea's arc into one balanced cup. Gongfu suits oolong, pu-erh and any leaf you want to study, because each short steep shows a different stage: aroma first, body and sweetness in the middle, then a slow fade.
A few habits carry across both. Weigh the leaf. Pre-heat the vessel. Decant completely — leaf left standing in water keeps brewing. And when a cup tastes wrong, change one thing at a time: temperature, then time, then quantity.
iiiFixing a bad cup
Nearly every disappointing cup comes from one of four variables: leaf, water, temperature or time. Before buying different tea, run through the list.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Try |
|---|---|---|
| Bitter, harsh | Water too hot or steep too long | Drop 5–10 °C; shorten by a third |
| Thin, watery | Too little leaf | Add leaf before adding time — time adds grip faster than body |
| Flat, dull | Stale water or stale leaf | Fresh cold water; check the tin's date and seal |
| Sour | Over-steeped green, or pu-erh stored damp | Shorter steep; air the leaf a few days |
| Cloudy when cooled | “Cream down” — tannins binding as strong black tea cools | Nothing; it is normal |
| Metallic | Very hard or chlorinated water | Filtered or low-mineral bottled water |
| Musty pu-erh | Humid storage | Rest the cake in a dry room; rinse the leaf before the first steep |
Write the fix in the notebook next to the tea. The second time you brew it, you start from the corrected line.