Three Keys of Brewing A Good Cup of Tea I: Tea’s Quantity

Tea brewing is highly subjective, ways of tea brewing are utterly influenced by personal preference, tea sets, and tea kinds.

Tea’s Quantity Water Temperature Time and Steeps

There is no golden rule can tell you how much loose tea should be just right when you try to make a good cup of tea. Tea tasting is highly subjective. The ways of brewing are utterly influenced by personal preference, tea sets, and tea kinds. If you want to figure out your own way of brewing catering to your personal tastes, you’ll need multiple tries.

Unlike tea bag with set amount of tea in it, loose tea can be made either stronger or lighter in taste depending on how you like to brew your tea. It's important to add the right amount of loose tea to obtain that perfect tea taste.

According to many instructions given by tea websites and books, 1 gram of loose tea is recommended per 50ml – 60ml cup but this is not always relevant. You can choose the quantity of tea according to your taste or tea species by adding less or more next time.

The Quantity of Brewing Tea

The Quantity of Brewing Tea

A recommended way to measure tea leaves

The easiest way to get an accurate measure for how much loose tea to use is by weighing it. An inexpensive kitchen scale or a digital gram scale that is calibrated in grams can give you more accurate measurements. So the best advice is to weigh any new loose tea you are trying for the first time. Once you are familiar with the leaf and know the right volume to use, you can remember for the next time and just measure out the number of teaspoons, depending on the type of leaf.

Adding Tea Leaves

Adding Tea Leaves

By reference to tea kinds

There are six basic types of teas: green tea, black tea, white tea , oolong tea , pu-erh tea, yellow. All come from the same plant family – Camellia sinensis. So the plucked tea brought to the processing facilities or factory starts out basically the same, from the same kind of tea leaves. However, they are substantially different in several aspects, such as growing conditions, type of pluck, harvest time as well as taste. All those factors directly influence their own ways of brewing.

Black tea, green tea and white tea are types of tea which come as loose tea. Black teas usually stay the same size when brewed, but white and green tea usually expands so you end up with half a cup of brewed tea leaves. Green and white teas are strong in flavor so you might realize that just a 2-3g of loose tea is enough for your tastes.

Generally, 50 – 60ml water is good for 1 gram of black tea or green tea. Based on this, we can roughly calculate that 3 gram of loose tea would need 150 – 200ml water. But for pu-erh and oolong tea, you need to double the amount or increase more tea for the same cup of water. If brewing in a pot, determine how many cups of tea will be brewed and measure the loose tea accordingly.

A Good Cup of Tea

A Good Cup of Tea

By reference to personal condition

Another two things to consider along with the tea kinds are the personal preference and physical conditions. As we know, caffeine in tea leave has negative effects on sleep, if you are sensitive to caffeine, avoiding too much tea leaves when brewing is always reasonable. But for some people, like elder tea lovers who enjoy strong tea very much would put slightly more tea than those newbies do. For some people who have physical complaint, pregnant woman as an example, should decrease the amount of tea. Similarly, lactating women, Neurasthenia patients, Gastric ulcer patients, intoxicated person should always bear this rule in mind.


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