How to brew Japanese tea

Three things decide what ends up in your cup: how much leaf you use, how hot the water is, and how long you leave it. Get those right and almost any decent tea tastes good. Get the water wrong and even an expensive gyokuro tastes like a mistake.

The one mistake almost everyone makes

Boiling water. In most of Europe tea means black tea, and black tea wants water straight off the boil. Japanese green tea does not. At 100 °C the leaf releases its bitter compounds fast and its sweet ones slowly, so you get astringency without the depth underneath it.

For most sencha you want somewhere around 70 to 80 °C. That is boiling water left to stand for a few minutes, or poured into a second cup first and then onto the leaf. A yusamashi is a bowl made for exactly this, but a spare mug does the same job.

How much leaf

Around 4 g per 200 ml for sencha, which is roughly one heaped teaspoon per cup. Japanese cups are smaller than European mugs, and a kyusu of 200 to 240 ml is a normal size for two servings.

Japanese tea is usually brewed with more leaf and less time than European tea, not less leaf and more time. If your tea tastes thin, add leaf before you add minutes.

Every product page on this site lists the amount, the temperature and the time for that specific tea.

How long

One minute is a good starting point for sencha. From there you adjust to taste: a little longer for more body, a little shorter if it is turning sharp.

Deep steamed sencha is often brewed shorter, because the finer leaf gives up its flavor faster, but that is a preference rather than a rule. Some fukamushi is perfectly happy at a full minute.

Gyokuro is the real exception: cooler water and longer, two minutes or more.

Second and third infusions

Japanese tea is made to be brewed more than once, and the second cup is often the better one. Use water slightly hotter than the first time and steep for half as long. Most sencha gives you two or three good infusions, gyokuro three, and hōjicha usually one.

Do not let the leaf sit in water between infusions. Pour the pot out completely each time.

Why a kyusu helps

A Japanese teapot has a side handle and a mesh built into the wall of the spout, which means the leaf sits loose in the pot and unfurls fully. An infuser basket squeezes the leaf into a smaller space.

The other advantage is that a kyusu pours out completely and quickly. That matters more with Japanese tea than with black tea, because the steeping times are short and leaf left standing in water keeps extracting.

Quick reference

Matcha works differently, because you drink the leaf instead of an infusion of it. That has its own page.

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