Brewing Guides
Tea brewing temperature chart
Every figure below is somebody's published guidance, and we name whose. Nothing here is a number we made up.
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Green tea wants 160-180F, black tea wants 200-212F, and everything else sits between. Those figures are published by Art of Tea and cited below. The rule they encode is simple enough to remember without the chart: the less oxidized the tea, the cooler the water.
The chart
| Tea type | Fahrenheit | Celsius (converted) | Steep time |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 160-185F | 71-85C | 1-3 minutes |
| Green | 160-180F | 71-82C | 1-3 minutes |
| Oolong, rolled | 185-205F | 85-96C | 3-5 minutes |
| Oolong, long leaf | 185-205F | 85-96C | 4-7 minutes |
| Black | 200-212F | 93-100C | 3-5 minutes |
| Pu-erh, raw (sheng) | 195-205F | 91-96C | 2-4 minutes |
| Pu-erh, ripe (shou) | 205-212F | 96-100C | 3-5 minutes |
| Herbal tisanes | 200-212F | 93-100C | 5-7 minutes |
The Fahrenheit figures and steep times are Art of Tea's, quoted directly. The Celsius column is our conversion of those Fahrenheit figures, rounded to the nearest degree — it is arithmetic, not a second source.
How to use it
Start in the middle of the band and adjust from there. If the tea tastes harsh or drying, go cooler or shorter. If it tastes thin, use more leaf before you reach for more time — over-steeping produces bitterness rather than strength.
The bands are wide on purpose. There is no single correct temperature for green tea, and any chart giving you one precise number per type is presenting a preference as a fact.
Matching the chart to a kettle
| Preset | Temperature | Chart band it serves |
|---|---|---|
| White | 170F | Inside white (160-185F) and green (160-180F) |
| Green | 180F | Top of green, bottom of white |
| Oolong | 195F | Middle of oolong (185-205F) |
| Coffee | 205F | Top of oolong, bottom of black |
| Black | 212F | Top of black and herbal (200-212F) |
Five presets cover every band in the chart, which is why preset kettles work well for beginners despite offering fewer choices than a dial. If you want a specific number inside a band, OXO publishes one-degree control from 104F to 212F and Fellow publishes 104F to 212F with a hold mode.
Without a temperature-controlled kettle
Boil, then wait, then measure. An instant-read thermometer costs about fifteen dollars and removes the guessing entirely. Pouring the water into your mug first speeds the cooling considerably, because a wide open vessel loses heat much faster than a covered kettle.
We are deliberately not publishing a cooling table. How fast boiled water falls depends on the volume, the vessel and the room, and we have not measured it. A chart of made-up cooling times would be exactly the kind of borrowed number this page exists to avoid.
Why sources vary
Different sellers publish slightly different bands, and they are all defensible. Tea is agricultural, styles vary within a type, and the person who grew and processed a specific tea usually knows more about it than any general chart.
So if the tea you bought came with brewing instructions, use those. This chart is for the very common case where it did not.
What we did not do
We did not run brewing trials, taste tests or temperature experiments. The Fahrenheit figures and times are Art of Tea's published guidance, cited below, and the Celsius column is arithmetic. If we ever publish a figure we measured ourselves, it will say so.
Questions
What temperature should I brew green tea at?
Art of Tea publishes 160-180F, which is roughly 71-82C. Boiling water scorches green tea and produces astringency and a flat, cooked flavor.
What temperature is black tea brewed at?
Art of Tea publishes 200-212F, or about 93-100C. That is essentially what a kettle gives you at the moment it clicks off.
Does water temperature really matter for tea?
For green and white tea, a great deal — the gap between their band and black tea's is around forty degrees. For black and herbal tea it matters much less, because their band is where a kettle naturally ends up.
How do I get the right temperature without a special kettle?
Boil, pour into the mug, wait a couple of minutes and measure with an instant-read thermometer. A wide open mug cools far faster than the kettle does.
Sources
Every figure on this page came from one of these, retrieved during the research pass for this article. Where a maker publishes nothing we could verify, the page says so instead of substituting a number.
Read next
- How long to steep teaPublished steep times by type, the reason the ranges are wide, and what over-steeping actually does to the cup.
- Green tea water temperatureThe forty-degree gap between green tea and boiling water, what it does to the cup, and three ways to close it.
- How to brew loose-leaf teaThe complete method in five steps, with published parameters and the four mistakes that account for most bad cups.
- The best electric tea kettlesElectric kettles ranked on the specification that actually matters: how long they hold the temperature they reached.
- The tea brewing accessories worth buyingFour accessories ordered by impact rather than price, including the one we tell you to buy last.