How to Make the Perfect Cup of Tea

Tea leaves, water, and a few guidelines are all you need to brew a great cup

By Althea Chang-Cook

I never realized it as a kid, but drinking tea was a ritual in my family. We drank a variety of teas, each made in its own precise way. Every tea has an optimal steep time and ideal water temperature, and making sense of it all can be dizzying.

My maternal grandmother used her own basic method when my sisters and I visited in Vancouver: She placed a few black tea bags in a porcelain pot, poured just-boiled water over them, then added milk until it looked just the right color tan, and more sugar mixed in than I would put in my own tea now. It was a pretty average black tea preparation method.

But on weekend outings, while others had brunch, my family went out for dim sum, and we’d accompany our food with a dark tea called pu erh, chrysanthemum tea, or a mix of both, using whole leaves and flowers. (Kids especially liked the chrysanthemum with a tiny bit of sugar.)

And when we visited my uncle, a trained Chinese chef, across the border in Washington state, he made gong fu cha, a more complex process of preparing tea in a tiny pot and serving it in tiny cups.

All my life I thought gong fu cha was a type of tea. But at the 2022 Fancy Food Show held by the Specialty Food Association in New York earlier this summer, I talked to a tea expert and educator, Shunan Teng, and learned that it’s not a specific type of tea, but a way to brew it.

“It’s a flash brewing method where we use a large amount of tea and very little water,” says Teng, who’s also the founder and CEO of Tea Drunk, which offers online courses on the origins, history, and preparation of various types of tea. “We don’t let the leaves linger in water,” Teng says. After steeping just 5 to 7 seconds, the resulting liquid, called liquor, is poured off into what’s known as three-sip cups. The same leaves are used more than a dozen times, each time peeling back a layer of complexity. “This method will enable us to enjoy the aroma, taste, mouthfeel, and aftertaste of good tea in full technicolor,” she says.

Of course, tea preparation doesn’t need to be as labor intensive. Here, we break down how to prepare the perfect cup of tea, whether it’s black, green, white, herbal, or iced.

Before You Pour

After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world, according to the Tea Association of the U.S.A., and it can be found in almost 80 percent of all U.S. households. So whether you’re practically a lifelong tea drinker or just getting started, here are a few fun facts. (Or jump straight to How to Make Your Tea.)

The Actual Definition of Tea

Tea industry experts and purists tend to say the true definition of tea is what’s brewed using the plant camellia sinensis. Herbal “teas” made without that plant, for instance chamomile, chrysanthemum, mint, and the bagged Tazo Wild Sweet Orange (Amazon, Target) in my pantry right now, don’t fit this definition of tea, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll go over those, too.

Loose Tea vs. Tea Bags

Tea bags can make tea preparation easier—a few of the teas I drink at home are bagged, such as Tower of London tea from Harney & Sons (Amazon) and Emperor’s 100% White Tea from Republic of Tea (Amazon). But there are a few things to be aware of before you choose bags over loose leaves.

For a great brew, tea leaves need room to expand, and packaged tea bags, sachets, and pyramids tend to restrict leaves, says Quentin Vennie co-founder and CEO of The Equitea Co., based in Baltimore. When tea comes in a bag, it can be difficult to judge a tea’s quality, and if all you’re getting is tea dust and broken leaves, that “leads to a very bitter and astringent tea liquor,” Vennie says.

If you do choose a bagged tea, know that some bags are less harmful to the environment than others. Some are made with biodegradable paper and others are made with plastic, which can pile up in landfills (and even release plastic particles into your brewed tea, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology in 2019).

And it may not seem like a big deal, but bags closed with staples can mean small bits of aluminum can also accumulate in landfills over time. According to the Republic of Tea, which makes tea bags without staples, for every million cups of its tea consumed, 60 pounds of staples are kept out of landfills.

If you’re using loose tea, however, you can add it directly to a pot, or use a mesh strainer or sachet that’s reusable and throw out only the leaves or even compost them. These loose leaves often come in reusable tins as well.

How to Make Your Tea

How long you steep your tea and the temperature of the water you use make all the difference when it comes to preparing the perfect cup of tea, and there are a few general guidelines worth sticking to. For example, if you don’t let the leaves sit in the water long enough, you’ll get a weak tea; if you steep leaves for too long, the results can be even more unfortunate.

“Oversteeping results in a very strong, bitter-tasting cup of tea,” says Shabnam Weber, a tea sommelier (yes, there is such a thing) and president of the Tea & Herbal Association of Canada. “Green teas will steep the fastest and become bitter, followed by black and oolong. White teas, I find, don’t actually become bitter, so I don’t think I would even refer to oversteeping when it comes to this category of tea,” Weber says. Herbals may be easier to get right because if you steep them for a long time, they’ll just get stronger.

Black or Dark Tea

Black tea is made by drying leaves of the camellia sinensis plant.

Photo: Yevgen Romanenko/Getty Images

According to the Tea Association of the U.S.A., about 84 percent of all tea consumed is black tea, from Lipton tea bags to Arizona Iced Tea to the English staple PG Tips (Amazon) to Earl Grey, maybe to even pricier black tea grown on volcanic ash in Hawaii.

Common Black Tea

Best water temperature: 205° F to 212° F
Optimal steep time: 3 to 5 minutes
What to add: Cow’s milk (I froth mine), plant-based milk, sugar, or honey

Tea experts like Vennie, who outlined many of the suggested water temperatures and steep times here, agree that just-boiled water is suitable for pouring over black tea. But there are exceptions.

Masala Chai

Best water temperature: Add directly to a pot of boiling water (212° F)
Optimal steep time: Boil for 2 to 7 minutes
What to add: Cow’s milk or plant-based milk, sugar or honey

Masala Chai is common in Indian households and is often made by actually boiling black tea leaves or bags in water, and adding cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, star anise, and black pepper together. You may find shortcuts like tea bags, powders like the Blue Lotus Chai Traditional Masala Chai (Amazon) in my pantry, and concentrated syrups like the Tazo Chai Concentrate (Amazon) I used as a barista in college.

Syrups like those are standardized, and they save people the trouble of worrying about time and temperature, says Saurabh Kajaria, co-founder of Trishnna Tea based in Houston. But be warned, shortcuts aren’t always ideal. “The commercial concentrates are full of sugar and preservatives,” and if you take a look at a nutrition label on one of these packages, you might decide to put it back on the shelf.

Pu Erh Tea

Best water temperature: 180° F to 195° F
Optimal steep time: 1 to 3 minutes
What to add: Nothing

Pu erh is a different type of dark tea. It’s made from camellia sinensis leaves, but unlike common black tea, which is made when leaves are oxidized, meaning exposed to air in order to dry, pu erh tea is fermented by letting it sit in piles and slightly decompose before drying, giving it a distinctly different, I’d say woodsy, flavor. The go-to in my kitchen is Golden Moon Organic Pu Erh tea. You can use pu erh tea leaves for up to five infusions, meaning you can steep the same leaves five times, and when you have a great tea, it gets better each time you steep it, Vennie says. You’ll see in many Chinese restaurants that pu erh leaves are steeped several times throughout a meal.

Green Tea

Matcha is ground green tea, which is commonly whisked into hot water with a bamboo whisk.

Photo: Alina Nechaeva/Getty Images

Best water temperature: 175° F to 180° F
Optimal steep time: 2 to 3 minutes
What to add: Nothing. Serve straight up.

Green tea makes up just about 15 percent of all the tea imported into the U.S. Like black tea, it’s made by exposing it to open air to wilt it, then drying it, but it more quickly goes from being picked to being dried. It’s commonly steeped alone, but there are green teas available with a variety of natural flavors added as well.

Scented Green Teas

You may increasingly find green tea blended with other natural flavors. Among the green teas in my kitchen cupboard, for example, is green jasmine tea, which has a distinctly green tea taste and a hint of jasmine flowers or jasmine oil. Genmaicha is another green tea, but it contains toasted rice. It may be an acquired taste if you’re used to more basic green teas, but you can cook with it, too, instead of simply drinking it straight.

Matcha

Best water temperature: 175° F to 180° F
Optimal steep time: None, drink after whisking in hot water.
What to add: Nothing. Best served straight up.

I see matcha as the soft shell crab of green teas: You consume the whole leaf. It’s dried, then ground into a powder, and whisked into hot water. Matcha can be found blended with milk in an iced latte from Dunkin’ or Starbucks, or in the form of ice cream, but to truly appreciate the flavor, and the caffeine content that’s nearly double that of regular brewed tea, I think it’s best to drink it with nothing added. Maeda-en Ceremonial Matcha (Amazon) is currently in my pantry to satisfy a green tea craving.

Oolong Tea

Oolong tea comes in many styles, but all exist on a continuum between black and green teas.

Photo: Adobe Stock

Best water temperature: 185° F to 205° F
Optimal steep time: 3 minutes
What to add: Nothing. Best served straight up.

Oolong teas sit between black and green, depending on how the leaves are processed. Darker oolongs are processed more like black tea, and lighter oolongs are processed more similarly to green tea. Tieguanyin is a type of oolong that I first learned of under the name Kuan Yin, or the Iron Goddess of Mercy. In addition to being prepared using these typical guidelines, oolong is used for gong fu cha, says Teng, the tea educator and founder of Tea Drunk. Oolongs tend to be smooth, and some are described as tasting milky on their own.

White Tea

Silver needle white tea stands out for its mild complexity. It's somewhat rare though, and can be expensive.

Photo: Marek Uliasz/Getty Images

Best water temperature: 165° F to 170° F 
Optimal steep time: 2 to 3 minutes
What to add: Nothing

White tea is delicate, so it’s best to treat it delicately. That means use water that’s not too hot, and don’t steep it for too long. While some tea experts and brands suggest steeping for just a couple of minutes, the directions on the tin of white tea I own say to steep for just 1 minute.

Once upon a time, I was gifted a pricey tin of Rishi Silver Needle White Tea, and I never would have guessed what the rare, fuzzy little hand-picked buds harvested early in the spring would taste like: mild, but with a complex combination of a little grassy, slightly fruity, and slightly floral.

Herbal Tea

Herbal tinctures like those made from hibiscus flowers may be a bit tart and could benefit from a bit of sweetener. They're also refreshing iced.

Photo: Emma Farrer/Getty Images

Best water temperature: 175° F to 212° F
Optimal steep time: 2 to 7 minutes 
What to add: Drink as-is or add honey or lemon to taste

Herbal tinctures like mint, chamomile, rooibos, and hibiscus are popular, but there’s a wide variety of herbal blends to choose from, too, and the optimal steep time can vary, so check the package directions.

“The specific steeping time recommended on the packaging is important for ingredients to be allowed the optimal time to develop their flavor and mouthfeel,” says Heather Black, spokesperson for Clipper Tea, a top tea brand in England. Black says that generally if you’re looking for a lighter or more delicate taste, 8 ounces of boiling water (212° F) for 3 to 4 minutes is the way to go, and if you want a stronger and fuller mouthfeel, you can steep longer, from 5 to 7 minutes.

Kajaria, the Trishnna Tea co-founder, recommends brewing his company’s loose leaf herbal teas at 175° F for 2 to 3 minutes.

Iced Tea

A large majority of tea consumed in the U.S. is iced.

Photo: Sarawut Srisomchai/Getty Images

Around 75 to 80 percent of tea consumed in the U.S. is iced, according to the Tea Association of the U.S.A., from Snapple peach iced tea, a favorite in my household, to common iced tea made at home to fancier brands.

To make a glass of iced tea at home, you can use any of the teas above using package instructions, or follow our guidelines and pour the hot tea over ice.

If you want to make a big batch, make a concentrate by adding eight to 10 tea bags to a quart of hot water and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Then simply pour the tea over ice. You can sweeten to taste, which can be a trial-and-error process, so start small and add your sweetener little by little until you reach the sweetness you want. Then remember or write down what “to taste” means to you.

Gear to Make the Perfect Cup of Tea

In addition to brewing methods, the perfect cup of tea also depends on the gear you have to make it.

What to Drink Your Tea From

If you’re considering using clayware tea pots or cups for your tea, make sure they are glazed, otherwise it may not be food-safe, Teng says. Some clayware can contain lead and other heavy metals. But porcelain can be used glazed or unglazed, and glassware will also work, Teng says. But she doesn’t recommend using metal teaware. “While we can use metal kettles to boil water, the risk of tea having a chemical reaction with metal teaware is very high,” and it could impact the tea’s flavor, Teng says.

Electric Kettles With Special Features

Getting your water up to the right temperature is essential to preparing the perfect cup of tea. Some electric kettles have buttons for different temperatures, making it easier to prepare it well.

Cuisinart PerfecTemp Cordless Electric Kettle CPK-17

Breville IQ Kettle

Gear for Cold-Brew Tea

Cold brewing is another method for making cold or iced tea, and many cold-brew coffee makers are also fit for the job. Here are some top-rated cold-brew makers in CR’s tests.

Primula Burke Cold Brew Coffee Maker PBPBK-5101

Asobu Insulated Portable Brewer KB900

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