Reviews
Part of Tasting habits that change what you notice: kokumi and three temperatures
Why pack instructions for tea tasting are a floor, not an optimum
Pack brewing instructions are a conservative default, not an optimum. What the research found on temperature, steeping time and leaf-to-water ratio.
What to take away
- Brewing instructions on a pack are a starting point set for the average buyer, not an optimum for your cup.
- Published optimization work on green tea landed at 85 C for three minutes, with long steeps scoring badly on every sensory measure.
- On oolong, the leaf-to-water ratio moved quality more than temperature or time did, and the best setting differed by how often the drinker drinks tea.
- Treat the label as a hypothesis. Run it once as printed, then move one variable.
What the numbers on the pack are for
A pack instruction has to work for someone with no scale, an unknown kettle and one attempt. It is set conservatively, usually a shorter time and lower dose than an experienced drinker would use. A reasonable default, a poor destination.
Run the printed instruction once, exactly. It gives you a baseline and it tells you whether the seller has any idea what the tea needs. Instructions that say boiling water for five minutes on a delicate green tea are a signal about the seller, not about the leaf.
What the research actually landed on
For Turkish green tea, a study brewed samples at 75, 85 and 95 C for one to 45 minutes and scored each with a trained panel. It found 85 C for three minutes was optimal, with EGCG peaking at 50.69 mg per 100 mL.
EGCG peaks at 85C, 3 minutes
- 75 Clower EGCG
- 85 C50.69 mg/100 mL
- 95 Clower EGCG
- 3 minpeak yield
- 30-45 minvery low score
Epistructured catechin yield rose over the first three to five minutes, then fell. Brews of 30 and 45 minutes scored very low for bitterness and dark color.
That is one tea from one origin, so the numbers are not universal. The shape is: extraction of the good part front-loads, and the part you do not want keeps arriving.
Nobody checked those numbers before printing them
Nothing stands behind a pack instruction. A National Academies review of US food labeling records that the country has no single system for regulating food labels.
Responsibility is split between two federal agencies with different modes of operation, and the FDA has never operated prior approval for food labels.
So brewing advice on a pack is the seller's own copy. It is worth reading and it carries no more authority than the seller has earned. The rest of the pack is engineered too, and how it is designed to move attention has been measured with eye tracking.
Reading a pack line by line
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Use one teaspoon | Anywhere from 1.5 g to 5 g depending on leaf shape |
| Boiling water | Fine for black and dark tea, wrong for most green |
| Steep 3 to 5 minutes | The upper number is where bitterness usually arrives |
| Resteep | Only useful if the first dose was heavy enough |
| Serve with milk | The tea is astringent enough to need it |
The teaspoon problem is the important one. Rolled oolong and fluffy white tea differ enormously in weight for the same volume, so a spoon instruction on a whole-leaf tea is close to no instruction at all. A bar working without a scale accepts a dosing error of about 30 percent for the same reason.
What to do with a pack you disagree with
Brew it as printed. Then drop the temperature 10 degrees and keep everything else. Then raise the dose by half and cut the time.
Three cups, three data points, and you will usually have found something better than the label in twenty minutes. The wider method is in 17 thoughtful approaches to tea tasting ideas. What else the pack should carry is in what to look for when buying specialty tea.
Common questions
Should I trust a seller's brewing advice at all?
Yes, as a starting point, and more so if it is specific to the lot. Generic advice printed across a whole range tells you the range was labeled, not tasted.
Why do Western and Asian instructions differ so much?
They describe different formats. Western instructions assume one long steep in a mug. Short-steep instructions assume more leaf, less water and several rounds.
Does a lower temperature always mean less bitterness?
Usually, but it also means less body and less aroma. Dropping temperature is a trade, not a fix.
What if there are no instructions?
Start at 3 g per 200 mL, 85 C, three minutes for anything unfamiliar. Adjust from there. It will not be optimal and it will rarely be bad.
