How to Brew Oolong Tea: Temperatures, Steep Times and Leaf for Every Style

To brew oolong tea, use about 4–7 g of leaf per 100 ml in a gaiwan or small teapot, give it a quick rinse, and steep in seconds rather than minutes, adding a little time each round. Green-style rolled oolongs such as Tieguanyin want 80–90 °C and a 5–10 second first steep. Roasted and Wuyi oolongs want 90–95 °C and 10–20 seconds. Good leaf gives 5–12 steeps, depending on the style.

The catch is that "oolong" runs from nearly green to nearly red, with some teas spending many hours over charcoal. Oolong is a way of processing, not a single tea, and the brewing follows the processing. So the first job is working out which kind is in your bag. Background on each is in my guide to Chinese oolong.

Wuyi rock oolong is the oolong I drink most, so I have a soft spot for very hot water. The numbers below match the gongfu brewing chart.

Which oolong is in your bag?#

Look at the dry leaf. Tight balls, roughly the size of a peppercorn, are rolled oolong. When they're bright green to jade and smell of flowers, you have a green-style tea: modern Tieguanyin or a Taiwanese high mountain oolong. Darker brown balls with a toasty smell have been roasted, as with traditional Tieguanyin or Dong Ding.

Long, dark, twisted strips are strip-style oolong. From the Wuyi Mountains (Shui Xian, Rou Gui, Da Hong Pao) they smell of roast and dark fruit. Long, slender strips with a strong honey or flower perfume are usually Dan Cong from Phoenix Mountain in Guangdong. Fluffy, multicoloured leaf with silvery tips is Oriental Beauty, a Taiwanese oolong oxidized so far that it sits next door to red tea.

Still unsure? The liquor helps (pale gold against amber), and roasted vs green oolong covers the rest.

Greener and more floral means cooler water; darker and more roasted means hotter water and longer additions. Dan Cong breaks the pattern: hot water, but first steeps so short you barely have time to put the kettle down. Oriental Beauty looks dark yet takes less leaf, cooler water and no rinse. Treat it as a delicate tea in a dark coat.

A gongfu session, step by step#

1. Weigh the leaf. Rolled oolong is dense, so a spoonful can be far more than you meant. Long Wuyi and Dan Cong strips do the reverse: they look like a lot and weigh little.
2. Heat everything. Pour boiling water through the gaiwan or pot and cups, then discard it.
3. Wake the leaf. Drop it into the warm vessel and close the lid for a few seconds. Then lift it and smell.
4. Rinse. Pour water in and out straight away. For rolled and strip oolongs it wakes the leaf and washes off dust. Skip it for Oriental Beauty.
5. Steep. Pour down the side of the vessel rather than straight onto the leaves, wait the first-steep time, then pour out every drop into a fair cup (chahai, the jug that evens out the strength) and serve.
6. Keep going. Add the extra seconds each round. Stop when the tea turns thin, not when you reach a number.

Why rolled oolong balls need room#

Those tight balls are whole leaves, often three of them still joined by a piece of stem, squeezed into shape by being rolled in cloth again and again. Give them hot water and they unfurl into full leaves many times the size of the dry ball. By the third or fourth round, 6 g of rolled oolong can fill a 100 ml gaiwan to the lid.

That has two consequences. The early steeps are light, because the water only reaches the outside of the ball, so the second or third steep is usually where the tea shows what it is. Judge it there. And if you overpack the vessel, the leaves have nowhere to go. They press against the lid and brew unevenly. Keep the dose inside the chart and fill the water to about 1 cm below the rim. High mountain oolong is the extreme case, with very tight balls and big leaves; if you've ever watched a gaiwan lid slowly rise, you know.

Strip-style leaf behaves the opposite way. Wuyi and Dan Cong strips are already long and open, so they give flavour from the first seconds and punish a moment's distraction.

When you finish, open a spent leaf on the lid. In many oolongs it's green with a reddish rim, left by the shaking that bruised the edges during processing.

How long to steep oolong, round by round#

The chart gives the first steep and how much to add. Written out for a 100 ml gaiwan, the two rolled styles look like this. Strip-style teas have their own session tables on the Wuyi rock tea and Dan Cong pages.

If round three is already strong, hold the time for a round instead of adding. How many times can you steep oolong? From good leaf, expect 5–10 rounds of green-style rolled oolong, 7–10 of roasted, often more than ten of Wuyi, 8–12 of Dan Cong and up to 10 of Oriental Beauty. In a mug, about three is the honest number.

Gaiwan, Yixing pot or mug#

A porcelain gaiwan is the place to start. Porcelain doesn't hold on to smells and lets you see the liquor and the opening leaf; green-style oolong shows its aroma best in it.

An unglazed Yixing clay pot holds heat, which suits the darker side: roasted rolled oolong, Wuyi rock tea and the long steeps late in a session. The clay absorbs the oils of whatever you brew, so give each pot one style of tea. I own a few Yixing pots and still brew mostly in a gaiwan, because I change teas through the day and a gaiwan doesn't mind.

In a mug or Western teapot, oolong works well with much less leaf and a longer steep. Use about 3 g per 250 ml, 90 °C for green-style or 90–95 °C for roasted oolong, for 2–3 minutes, then re-steep twice, a little longer each time. Dan Cong is the one oolong that doesn't love a mug. The whole comparison is in gongfu vs Western brewing.

Cold brew for the hot months#

Oolong is one of the best teas for cold brewing, and it's the laziest method on this page. Put about 2 teaspoons of leaf in a litre of cold, filtered water (for rolled oolong that's roughly 5–6 g), leave it in the fridge for 8–12 hours and strain. High mountain oolongs and Oriental Beauty suit it best: cold water draws out their sweetness and leaves most of the bitterness behind. Amounts for other teas are in cold brew tea.

When the cup tastes wrong#

Change one thing at a time.

Before the kettle goes on, check four things:

• Balls or strips, green or roasted?
• Water temperature set for that style
• Leaf weighed for the vessel
• Timer ready for the first steep

And if the tea is weak, add a gram next time rather than leaving it to sit. Longer steeps pull out bitterness faster than flavour.