Steep times

Personally, I vary steep time based on brew color since I gongfu everything. Only thing I tend to keep somewhat consistent is the temp. I do:

Young raw puerh, White and Oolong – 190f
Green – 180f
Boiling for everything else, and sometimes i’ll use boiling for roasted oolongs and yancha, and sometimes boiling for white and young raw puerh…also sometimes i boil for green…hm…I guess I just wing it and it tastes great. hahaha

I rinse compressed ripe puerh just to open it up, and loose so that my first steep is pretty dark. I never rinse raw puerh unless it’s super compressed.

My general rule of thumb for steeping tea is that if it tastes good you’re doing it right

;-)

While I think there are no rules per say I generally start with 5 seconds for gongfu and add a little at each additional steep.

I usually do 80C for greens, 85C for whites, 90C for oolongs, and boiling for anything else.

As for times, I used to go with the max. recommended time but now I find myself aiming for the lower end of the spectrum (or even lower for some greens and whites if the recommended time seems oddly long).

Good to know! Usually, I vary temp by the tea. But, I generally do three minutes a steep. Wondering if I should adjust my method

Hello friend Julie, steep time all base on the which kind of tea that brewing:
green tea, white tea, puerh raw tea that better use water around 85℃, then 5 seconds could be pour.
Black tea and puerh shu tea, should brew with boiling water that full flavor will make out, around 3 seconds could pour out.
it is my method, of caurse your favorite flavor is the best brewing way :)

I used to mostly go by package instructions but I seen they varied so much even in the same type of tea. I like teavana’s steep instructions. But what I use now is an app called “Tea Timer Pro” and I just select what tea I am brewing and it times it for me and has a nice song to let you know it’s ready. I enjoy the defaults in it, I find it accurate for the teas I prepare. There’s even a place to add tea names and you can make the steep times you want for that tea. Ex. Most herbals I’ll steep for 6 minutes, but Apple Custard from Davids Tea I like to steep for 10 minutes. lol.