How to Brew Green Tea: Glass, Gaiwan and Mug, With the Right Temperature

To brew green tea, use water well below boiling, at 75–85 °C (cooler for bud-heavy teas, warmer for bigger leaves), weigh the leaf and keep the steep short. In a gaiwan that means 3–5 g per 100 ml and a first steep of 10–20 seconds; in a mug, about 2–3 g per 250 ml for no longer than 1.5 minutes; in a tall glass, about 3 g, topped up as you drink. The method changes the leaf-to-water ratio and the timing, not the basic rule: gentle heat, short contact.

Green tea has a reputation for being fussy, and it's half deserved. It isn't difficult, it just has no patience for boiling water. Below are the three common methods, a way to hit the temperature without a thermometer, and how to read a cup that went wrong. The teas themselves are mapped in my Chinese green tea guide, and the rest of the category lives in the green tea section.

Three methods side by side#

Pick the column that matches your vessel and adjust from there.

	Tall glass	Gaiwan (gongfu)	Mug or teapot
Leaf	About 3 g per 200–250 ml glass	3–5 g per 100 ml	About 2–3 g per 250 ml
Water	70–85 °C, by leaf type	75–85 °C (Bi Luo Chun 70–80 °C)	75–85 °C
Time	Drink once the leaves open	10–20 s, then +5 s each round	1.5 minutes at most
Rounds	Top up when a third is left	5–7	Usually a second cup

In a tall glass: water first or leaf first?#

This is how a great deal of green tea is drunk in China, and it's the prettiest method by a distance. You need a tall, heat-resistant glass of about 200–250 ml. Glass doesn't hold heat well, which suits green tea perfectly.

The one real decision is the order of water and leaf. Chinese tea writing describes three ways of doing it, usually called top, middle and bottom pour, and the choice depends on how tender and how dense the leaf is.

Pour	How	Suits
Top pour	Fill the glass with water at about 70–75 °C, then drop the leaf on top	Tiny, tightly rolled, downy buds such as Bi Luo Chun
Middle pour	Add the leaf, pour a splash of water at about 80 °C to cover it, wait 20–30 seconds, then fill	Flat or open bud-and-leaf teas such as Longjing and Huangshan Mao Feng
Bottom pour	Add the leaf, then fill the glass in one go, pouring down the side	Larger, sturdier leaves such as Tai Ping Hou Kui (80–85 °C) and Lu An Gua Pian (about 80 °C)

Delicate buds would be scalded by water poured onto them, so they go in last. Big leaves need the full pour to open at all. Middle pour is the compromise, and it works for most Chinese greens.

Once the leaves have opened and mostly sunk, start drinking. When about a third of the tea is left, top up with fresh hot water and carry on. It's essentially grandpa style with a green tea, and it can last most of a morning.

In a gaiwan, a few seconds at a time#

A gaiwan gives you the most control, which is why I brew mostly in one. Lots of leaf, little water, steeps counted in seconds. A porcelain gaiwan is the natural choice: it doesn't hold onto aromas, so it's ideal for green, white and yellow teas.

Tea	Leaf / 100 ml	Water	Rinse	1st steep	Then	Steeps
Most Chinese greens	3–5 g	75–85 °C	No	10–20 s	+5 s	5–7
Bi Luo Chun	1–1.5 g	70–80 °C	No	15 s	+5 s	—

1. Warm the gaiwan and cups with hot water, then pour it away.
2. Add the weighed leaf, cover for a moment and smell it: the cheapest pleasure in tea.
3. Skip the rinse; the first steep of a good green is often the best.
4. Pour the water gently down the inside wall rather than straight onto the leaf.
5. Steep 10–20 seconds and pour off every drop into a pitcher or straight into cups.
6. Leave the lid off or tilted between steeps, so the hot wet leaf doesn't stew, and add about 5 seconds each round.

Bi Luo Chun is the odd one out because its tiny buds pack densely: a spoonful weighs far more than it looks, so it takes much less leaf and cooler water. For every other tea type, the numbers are in the gongfu brewing chart.

In a mug or teapot, when you just want a cup#

The Western way: less leaf, more water, one longer steep. Perfectly respectable, and how most people drink green tea at a desk.

1. Put about 2–3 g of leaf in a roomy infuser basket or straight into the pot. A cramped tea ball keeps the leaves folded up, and folded leaves taste thin.
2. Pour water at 75–85 °C.
3. Steep for up to 1.5 minutes, tasting from about a minute.
4. Lift the infuser out, or pour all the tea off the leaves.

That last step matters most. Leaf left in a mug keeps extracting, and the cup turns harsh while you answer emails. Whole-leaf green tea is usually worth a second mug from the same leaf; give it a little longer than the first.

Getting the water right without a thermometer#

You'll find green tea temperatures quoted anywhere from 60–75 °C to 80–90 °C, sometimes on the same website. Yes, tea people really do argue about this. The honest answer is a range that depends on the leaf: buds and very young leaves at the cooler end, bigger and more mature leaves at the warmer end. In practice, 70–80 °C for Bi Luo Chun, 75–80 °C for pre-Qingming Longjing and 80–85 °C for Tai Ping Hou Kui covers most of what you'll meet.

No thermometer is needed. Boil the water, open the lid and let it stand: after roughly 2–3 minutes it's about 85 °C, and after about 10 minutes it's around 75–80 °C, though kettles vary. Pouring it into a pitcher first drops it several degrees more. If you brew green tea often, a kettle with temperature settings is the one gadget that really earns its counter space; there's more in best kettle for tea.

What's in the water matters almost as much as how hot it is. Soft water works best: filtered tap water, a low-mineral spring water or melted ice. Hard water mutes the aroma and leaves the cup flat, while distilled water and reverse-osmosis water make tea taste empty. Don't reboil water that has already been boiled and cooled; start with fresh. The details are in water for tea.

How many times can you re-steep it?#

Fewer times than an oolong, more than most people try. In a gaiwan, decent leaf gives 5–7 good rounds. A glass takes several top-ups before the tea turns watery, and a mug usually manages a second cup. The first steeps are the brightest; when it tastes like a thin vegetable broth, stop rather than steeping for five minutes in the hope of a revival.

Cold brewing is a different story. The long fridge method (roughly 2 teaspoons of leaf per litre, 8–12 hours) is lovely with high-mountain oolongs, white and red teas, but green tea tends to pick up a bitter edge over that time. If you want iced green tea, a shorter cold steep is the safer experiment.

Reading a cup that went wrong#

The cup usually tells you why. Change one thing at a time.

What you see or taste	Likely cause	Fix
Dark yellow liquor, smell of cooked spinach	Water too hot, or lid left on	Cooler water; lid off between steeps
Sweet first sips, harsh bottom of the mug	Leaves left in the cup	Remove the leaf at 1.5 minutes
Thin and watery, though the colour is fine	Too little leaf, often measured with a spoon	Weigh it; more leaf, not more time
Bi Luo Chun buds float in a clump and taste stewed	Hot water poured onto the buds	Top pour at about 70–75 °C
Big leaves stay closed, cup tastes faint	Water too cool for the leaf size	Go to 80–85 °C for large-leaf teas
Dull, flat, a film on the surface	Hard water or reboiled water	Fresh, soft or filtered water
Hay-like, flat at any temperature	Stale tea	Fresh spring harvest, stored airtight and dark

Bitterness has more causes than this, unpicked one by one in why green tea is bitter.

Before the kettle goes on, a short checklist:

• Leaf weighed, not spooned: 3–5 g per 100 ml for a gaiwan, 2–3 g per 250 ml for a mug, about 3 g for a glass.
• Water boiled, then cooled to 75–85 °C, lower for buds.
• A timer for the first steep: 10–20 seconds in a gaiwan, 1.5 minutes at most in a mug.

Get those three right and green tea stops being fussy. It just knew what it wanted all along.