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How to Get the Tea to Water Ratio Right
Heshan Fernando
Co-founder & COO
Someone gives you an oolong and says to use plenty of leaf and steep it for twenty seconds. You use a teaspoon in a mug and steep for twenty seconds, and it tastes of hot water.
The advice was for gongfu brewing, which uses five to eight times the leaf. Applied to a Western ratio, twenty seconds extracts almost nothing.
Two methods, not one with variations
Western brewing uses a low leaf-to-water ratio over minutes. Roughly 1 gram per 100 ml, steeped three to five minutes, usually once or twice.
Gongfu brewing uses a high ratio over seconds. Roughly 5 to 8 grams per 100 ml, steeped 10 to 30 seconds, re-steeped many times.
These are not a spectrum. They are different approaches producing different results, and the parameters do not interchange.
Gongfu’s many short infusions each taste different — the early ones bright and aromatic, the middle ones fuller, the later ones softer and sweeter. That progression is the point of the method, and it is why the same leaves are worth five or ten infusions.
Western brewing extracts most of what the leaf has in one long steep, giving a single consistent cup and one or two weaker repeats.
| Method | Leaf per 100 ml | Steep time | Infusions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western | ~1 g | 3-5 min | 1-2 |
| Gongfu | 5-8 g | 10-30 s | 5-10+ |
Temperature matters by type
Delicate teas extract bitter compounds at high temperature. Robust ones need heat to extract properly.
Green tea — around 70 to 80 °C. Boiling water makes most greens astringent and grassy, and it is the single most common mistake with them.
White tea — 75 to 85 °C.
Oolong — 85 to 95 °C depending on how heavily oxidised.
Black tea — 95 to 100 °C. Needs near-boiling water to extract fully.
Pu-erh — boiling, and often a quick rinse first.
Herbal infusions — boiling, and typically longer than any true tea.
A kettle without temperature control gets close enough by boiling and waiting — roughly a minute off the boil for oolong, two to three for green.
Weigh the leaf
Leaf density varies enormously. A teaspoon of fine broken black tea and a teaspoon of large rolled oolong differ by a factor of several in weight.
That makes volume measurements unreliable across tea types, and it is why a spoon that works for one tea produces a weak or overwhelming cup with another.
A small scale removes the variable entirely and makes a good cup reproducible. It also makes advice transferable — a ratio in grams per 100 ml means the same thing to everyone, and a teaspoon does not.
Water matters more than most people expect
Tea is almost entirely water, and its mineral content changes the result noticeably.
Very hard water mutes flavour and produces a dull, flat cup, and it is responsible for the scum that forms on the surface of black tea.
Very soft or distilled water produces a thin result, because some mineral content is needed for extraction to work properly.
Moderately mineralised water is the target, which is why tea tastes different in different cities using the same leaf and method.
Filtering hard water improves the result significantly and costs little. Using distilled water does not, which surprises people who assume purer is better.
Water that has been boiled repeatedly also tastes flatter, having lost dissolved oxygen.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Applying gongfu times to Western ratios, or the reverse.
- Boiling water on green and white teas.
- Measuring by volume across different leaf types.
- Discarding leaves after one infusion, particularly with oolong and pu-erh which improve over several.
- Leaving leaves in the pot between cups, which over-extracts everything after the first.
How to do it with Tea Ratio Converter
The Tea Ratio Converter scales for either method.
- Enter the water volume for your vessel.
- Choose the tea type, which sets both ratio and temperature.
- Pick Western or gongfu — the two are not interchangeable.
- Weigh the leaf rather than measuring it by spoon.
Other conversion tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
Why does water temperature vary by tea?
Because delicate teas extract bitter compounds at high temperature. Green tea brewed with boiling water turns astringent, while black tea and pu-erh need near-boiling water to extract properly.
What is gongfu brewing?
A method using a high leaf-to-water ratio and very short infusions, re-steeping the same leaves many times. Each infusion tastes different, which is the point, and it uses several times the leaf of Western brewing.
Should I weigh the leaf?
Yes, for repeatability. Leaf density varies by a factor of several between types, so a teaspoon means something different for every tea in the cupboard.
Final thought
Decide which method you are using before anything else. Ratio, time and temperature all follow from it, and mixing parameters between the two produces the worst of both.