Pick your tea and how strong you like it. Heat the water to the temperature shown, add the tea, and press Start. Green and white teas turn bitter in boiling water, so they get cooler water and a shorter steep.
Each tea has a range of water temperatures and steeping times. Light uses the short end of the time range, strong the long end. Black tea, pu-erh, rooibos and herbal teas take freshly boiled water (95–100 °C); green tea wants 75–80 °C and white tea 80–85 °C, because hotter water pulls out bitter tannins.
No thermometer? Water just off the boil is about 95 °C; after about 2 minutes with the kettle lid open it’s around 85 °C, and after 4–5 minutes, close to 80 °C. Adding a splash of cold water first works too.
The amount is about 2–3 g of loose-leaf tea (roughly a heaped teaspoon, or one tea bag) per 250 ml cup. For a stronger cup, use more tea rather than steeping much longer, which mostly adds bitterness.
3 to 5 minutes in freshly boiled water: 3 for a lighter cup, 4 for most people, 5 if you take milk and like it strong.
Around 75–80 °C (165–175 °F), steeped for 2–3 minutes. Boiling water makes green tea bitter and grassy.
Herbal teas don’t contain the tannins that make black and green tea bitter, so 5–7 minutes or longer is fine — a longer steep just gives a stronger flavour.
About 2–3 g — one heaped teaspoon of most black or green teas, or a tablespoon of bulky ones like white tea or chamomile — per 250 ml.
Good-quality green, white, oolong and pu-erh can be steeped several times; add 30–60 seconds each time. Most black tea and tea bags are best steeped once.
