How to Brew White Tea and Green Tea: Water, Time and How Many Steeps

Neither likes boiling water: as our blog puts it, “in boiling water, delicate green and white teas will overcook, leaving less of their delicate flavors to reach the senses.”

The finer the tea, the more the water matters. Keen wrote that the rare teas, “especially the most subtle whites and greens, demand meticulous handling,” and that they deserve water that “brings out the best of both tea and taster.” Read the full piece: Microwaved, tepid, rolling boiling? Water for tea!

You do not need a thermometer. Boil the water, then let it stand for a few minutes: a little longer for green tea than for white. A kettle with temperature settings makes it easier still.

1. Weigh the leaf if you can. Fluffy buds weigh much less than a spoonful of rolled tea, so 2 to 2.5 g of white tea is more than a single teaspoon by volume. Our product records put 2.5 g of our whites at 2 to 3 teaspoons.
2. Heat the water to 80–85°C, well short of boiling.
3. Steep 3 to 5 minutes, tasting at 3. White tea is forgiving: Keen found it “more tolerant of temperature and time in brewing than greens.”
4. Steep again. Good whites give two or three more infusions; add a minute each time. Our Badamtam Moonlight can be steeped up to four times, “unfurling different flavors with every steep.”

How many times to steep

It depends on how much leaf is in the tea. For the buds-only Silver Needle, our tasters recommend a single infusion for the most expressive cup; you can steep the buds again, a little longer, but later cups are softer. The Moonlights, with their young leaves, hold up longer: our 2026 cards say to steep Badamtam and Margaret’s Hope three times, and the Exotic Moonlight and Castleton Summer twice.

In 2021 we gave the Badamtam Moonlight this method: 2.5 g of leaf, water at 80–85°C, steeped for 5 minutes, and “at least 3 times.” One customer went cooler still. He brewed our Badamtam Spring White three times at 70°C, for 4, 5 and 6 minutes, and “easily got 3 brilliant infusions.”

Over ice

White tea is lovely iced, and a later steep is the one to use. When our tasters worked through the Badamtam spring white in 2022, they poured the third steep over ice and found green mango.

Our note for the Margaret’s Hope Moonlight says the same of its second steep: “best served iced.” Brew it as usual and pour it over a full glass of ice.

1. Heat the water to 75–80°C, or let boiled water stand for a few minutes.
2. Use about 2 to 2.5 g of leaf, roughly one heaped teaspoon.
3. Steep 2 to 3 minutes, tasting at 2 the first time, then strain promptly so it does not turn harsh.
4. Serve plain, or with a little honey or lemon. Milk and sugar hide the flavor of both teas.

Rolled green leaf is denser than white tea, so a heaped teaspoon is usually enough. Whole-leaf greens can be steeped more than once: our Darjeeling Green Tea’s product page suggests two steeps.

Japanese greens need the most care. Keen’s figures for sencha were exact: a deep-steamed fukamushi at 150°F (about 66°C) for 1.5 minutes, a light-steamed asamushi at 160°F (about 71°C) for 1.5 minutes. “At 170°/2.5 minutes,” he wrote, “both these teas are transformed from exquisite to truly execrable.” Matcha is whisked, not steeped; see How to make green tea.

If green tea tastes bitter, the water was probably too hot or the steep too long. Leaf size matters too. As our tasters explained in 2021, dust and fannings have far more surface area than whole leaf, so they release their tannins quickly and make a much more bitter cup; whole leaf releases them slowly.

Steeping longer does not help. Keen put it plainly: “Longer does not mean stronger, only more bitter. The median time is just three minutes, with black teas up to five and Japanese green teas as short as 1.5 minutes.” For a stronger cup, add a little more leaf instead.

Forgiving is not careless, though, even for white tea. In 2015 one of our writers found a Namring Exotic White “a disappointment,” adding, “It is possible that the tea required more skilled preparation.” Every tea type is in one chart in How to brew loose leaf tea, and more causes of bitterness are in Why tea tastes bitter.