How long should tea steep? Between one and ten minutes, which is another way of saying that the question has no single answer, only a chart. A delicate green tea is finished before a herbal infusion has properly started, and the same black tea that needs four minutes as loose leaf is done in three as a bag. Steep too short and the cup is thin and watery; too long and tannins take over and the cup turns bitter and drying.

This page is the chart. It covers every major tea category with times and temperatures you can use right now, then explains the adjustments that actually matter: bags versus loose leaf, Western versus gongfu brewing, and how timing changes when you resteep. If you want the chemistry behind the numbers, our guide to the science of tea steeping goes deep; this article stays practical.

The Master Steeping Chart

Times below are for Western-style brewing with loose leaf: roughly 2 grams of tea per 250 ml (8 oz) cup. Start at the low end of each range, taste, and adjust in 30-second steps.

Tea type	Water temperature	Steep time	Good resteeps
Green tea	70-80°C (160-175°F)	1-3 min	2-3
White tea	75-85°C (170-185°F)	3-5 min	3-4
Oolong tea	85-95°C (185-205°F)	2-5 min	4-6
Black tea	90-100°C (195-212°F)	3-5 min	1-2
Pu-erh tea	95-100°C (205-212°F)	2-4 min	5-8
Herbal / tisane	100°C (212°F)	5-10 min	1
Rooibos	100°C (212°F)	5-7 min	1-2
Matcha	70-80°C (160-175°F)	Whisked, no steep	n/a

Two rules explain most of this chart. First, the less oxidized and more delicate the leaf, the cooler the water and the shorter the steep; our overview of the six tea categories explains why processing sets those limits. Second, temperature and time are a pair: if you brew cooler than listed, you can steep longer, and hotter water always shortens the safe window.

Green Tea: 1 to 3 Minutes

Green tea has the narrowest window of any category and it is where most ruined cups happen. The catechins that make green tea healthy also make it bitter when they flood out, and hot water pulls them fast.

Tea	Temperature	Time
Sencha	70-80°C	60-90 sec
Dragon Well (Longjing)	75-80°C	2-3 min
Gunpowder	75-80°C	1-2 min
Jasmine green	75-80°C	2-3 min
Genmaicha	80-85°C	1-2 min
Hojicha	90-95°C	30-60 sec

Japanese steamed greens like sencha run shorter and cooler than Chinese pan-fired greens, and roasted hojicha breaks the rules entirely because roasting has already destroyed the compounds that turn bitter. If green tea is your daily cup, our complete green tea brewing guide walks through each style in detail.

Black Tea: 3 to 5 Minutes

Black tea is the most forgiving category, which is why it conquered the world's breakfast tables. Full oxidation means the leaf is built for boiling water and a long pull.

Tea	Temperature	Time
English Breakfast	95-100°C	3-5 min
Assam	95-100°C	3-4 min
Ceylon	95-100°C	3-4 min
Darjeeling	90-95°C	2-4 min
Earl Grey	95-100°C	3-4 min
Lapsang Souchong	95-100°C	3-4 min

The exception is first flush Darjeeling, which is processed closer to an oolong and rewards slightly cooler water and an earlier pull. If you take milk, steep at the top of the range so the tea holds its own; if you drink it plain, three minutes is usually the sweet spot. The details live in our black tea brewing essentials.

Oolong Tea: 2 to 5 Minutes

Oolong spans the entire space between green and black, so its range is wide and the leaf style matters. Tightly rolled balls (Tieguanyin, Dong Ding) need time to unfurl and shine on the third or fourth steep. Dark, twisted-leaf rock oolongs open faster.

Western style, start rolled oolongs at 3 minutes and strip-style oolongs at 2. Better yet, brew oolong gongfu style with short steeps; no other category improves as much from it. Our guide to mastering oolong covers the light-to-dark spectrum.

White Tea: 3 to 5 Minutes

White tea looks delicate but steeps long. The unrolled, unbruised leaf gives up its flavor slowly, so those wispy buds need more time than a green, not less. Silver Needle rewards 4 to 5 minutes at 75-80°C; leafier Bai Mu Dan is ready closer to 3. Understeeping white tea is the most common mistake with it: the result tastes like nothing, and the drinker concludes white tea is boring. It is not; it was just underbrewed. More in our white tea complete guide.

Pu-erh: Rinse First, Then 2 to 4 Minutes

Aged and fermented pu-erh starts with a step no other category needs: a rinse. Pour boiling water over the leaves, wait 5 to 10 seconds, and discard it. The rinse wakes compressed leaves and washes off storage dust. Then brew at a full boil: 2 to 4 minutes Western style, or flash steeps of 10 to 20 seconds gongfu style, where a good cake will happily give you eight or more infusions.

Herbal Teas: 5 to 10 Minutes, No Penalty

Herbal infusions (chamomile, peppermint, ginger, rooibos, hibiscus) contain no Camellia sinensis, which means no tea tannins and no bitterness penalty for oversteeping. Boiling water, five minutes minimum, and up to ten for roots and seeds like ginger or fennel. If anything, most people understeep herbals: a two-minute chamomile is pale yellow water, and the calming compounds that make it a sleep tea need a full five to seven minutes to extract. Cover the cup while it steeps to keep the essential oils in. Our herbal brewing guide has per-herb details.

Tea Bags: Subtract About a Minute

Tea bags brew faster than loose leaf because the leaf inside is broken into small particles with far more surface area. A bagged black tea reaches full strength in 2 to 3 minutes, a bagged green in about 1, and pushing a bag to loose-leaf times is the classic route to a bitter cup. The flavor ceiling is also lower, as we cover in loose leaf vs tea bags, but the timing rule is simple: whatever the chart says, take a minute off and taste early.

Gongfu Brewing: Seconds, Not Minutes

Gongfu style flips the chart. Use 3 to 4 times more leaf in a small vessel, then steep for seconds: 10 to 15 for the first infusion, adding about 5 seconds each round. The same oolong that gets 3 minutes Western style gets 15 seconds gongfu, repeated eight times, and each steep tastes different. It is the best way to drink oolong and pu-erh, and our gongfu ceremony guide covers the full setup.

Resteeping: Add 30 to 60 Seconds Each Round

Good loose leaf is built for more than one infusion, and the timing rule is consistent: keep the temperature, extend the time. Add 30 to 60 seconds to each subsequent Western steep, so a sencha that started at 60 seconds gets 90, then about 2 minutes. Oolong, pu-erh, and white tea resteep best; herbal infusions mostly give one good cup. Our resteeping guide breaks down how many infusions each tea is worth.

The Cold Brew Exception

Time stops mattering, almost, when the water is cold. Steep any tea in fridge-temperature water and the tannin extraction that ruins a hot cup barely happens, which is why cold brew tea is nearly impossible to make bitter. The trade is time: 2 to 4 hours for green, 6 to 8 for black, 8 to 12 for herbals. It is a different technique rather than a longer steep, and it is the one place this chart's numbers do not apply.

How to Actually Hit These Times

Knowing the number and hitting it are different problems. The window between a perfect sencha and a bitter one is about sixty seconds, and "I'll just watch the clock" fails exactly when tea works best: when you step away and let your mind wander.

This is the problem Steep exists to solve. It ships with presets built from the same numbers as this chart for every major tea type, remembers the exact time you dialed in for your favorite tea, and steps you through resteeps with the timing extended automatically. The Apple Watch app means the countdown lives on your wrist while your hands are full with kettle and pot. Set the time once, and every cup after that is one tap. If you are still deciding whether a dedicated timer is worth it over a phone alarm, we made the full case here.

The Takeaway

Print the master chart, or better, let a timer remember it for you. Green short and cool, black long and hot, white longer than it looks, oolong and pu-erh in flashes if you can, herbals as long as you like. Start every new tea at the bottom of its range, adjust in 30-second steps, and write down what you liked. Steeping time is the cheapest upgrade in tea: it costs nothing, and it is the difference between the cup the leaf was capable of and the one most people actually drink.

Tea Steeping Times: The Complete Chart for Every Type of Tea