How Long to Steep Green Tea (Exact Times by Type)

The 80 °C rule, and why it exists

Green tea is unoxidised. The leaf is steamed or pan-fired within hours of picking to shut down the enzymes that would otherwise turn it brown, which means everything fragile survives into the cup — and stays fragile.

Two families of compounds compete for your attention. Catechins (chiefly EGCG) taste bitter and astringent. Amino acids, above all theanine, taste sweet, brothy and savoury — the quality Japanese tasters call umami. Work on catechin extraction from tea leaf shows the yield rising steeply with water temperature, which is the mechanism behind every piece of green-tea advice you have ever been given: the hotter the water, the more the bitter side of the leaf dominates before the sweet side has finished arriving.

Eighty degrees is the compromise that lets both come out in proportion. Ninety-five degrees is not a stronger cup; it is a differently balanced one, and the balance is worse.

Japanese greens: short, cool, and repeatable

Japanese green tea is steamed, which leaves the cell walls more broken and the extraction faster. Times are correspondingly short.

• Sencha — 80 °C, 3 g, 90 seconds. The benchmark. Second steep 2 minutes, third 2:30.
• Gyokuro — 60 °C, 6 g, 2 minutes. Twice the leaf, half the heat. The second infusion is shorter than the first (90 seconds), because the leaf is already open.
• Hojicha — 90 °C, 3 g, 60 seconds. Roasted over charcoal, so the delicate compounds are already gone and hotter water simply brings out the toasted sweetness. Only 15 mg of caffeine, which makes it the evening green.
• Genmaicha — 82 °C, 4 g, 2 minutes. The toasted rice needs a slightly bigger dose to register.

If a Japanese green tastes thin, add leaf before you add time. Extending a sencha from 90 seconds to three minutes will not give you more body — only more astringency.

Chinese greens: longer, gentler, more forgiving

Pan-firing leaves the leaf more intact, so extraction is slower and the window is wider.

• Dragon Well (Longjing) — 80 °C, 2 minutes. Flat-pressed leaves, chestnut sweetness. Three good Western steeps.
• Bi Luo Chun — 80 °C, 90 seconds. Tiny spiralled buds that extract fast; treat it more like a Japanese green.
• Jasmine Green — 80 °C, 2 minutes. Scented by layering with fresh jasmine blossom overnight, repeatedly. Over-steeping turns the perfume soapy.

The exceptions worth knowing

Moroccan Mint is the one green tea that genuinely wants boiling water — 100 °C for three minutes. It is built on gunpowder green, a tightly rolled leaf that is both robust and slow to open, and the spearmint needs heat to release its oils. Every other "use boiling water" instruction on a green-tea packet is wrong.

Matcha is not steeped at all. It is a suspension, not an infusion: 2 g of powdered tencha whisked into 70 ml of 70 °C water. There is no steeping time because there is nothing to strain. See the matcha water temperature guide.

Shincha, the first flush of the Japanese year, arrives in May and is brewed cooler and shorter than standard sencha — 70 °C for 60 seconds — because its sweetness is at its peak and heat is the only thing that can spoil it.

Gong Fu: five infusions from the same leaf

Chinese greens repay a small vessel. Use 5 g in 100 ml at the same 80 °C and steep in seconds:

No rinse — green tea is rinsed only if it is very dusty, and a rinse costs you a real proportion of the flavour. More on the trade in Gong Fu vs Western brewing.

If it still is not right

• Bitter and drying: water too hot. Drop to 80 °C.
• Thin and watery: not enough leaf. Go from 3 g to 4 g before touching the clock.
• Flat, papery, dusty: the tea is stale. Green tea has the shortest shelf life of any type — see how to store tea.
• Metallic or chalky: it is the water, not the tea. See water quality for tea.