Mini Course: How to Measure Tea

Water temperature and steeping time often play center stage in the conversation about how to get that one perfect cup of tea, but perfection begins long before you pop on the kettle.

The first crucial step in brewing tea begins with the amount of loose leaf you’re using. Just like baking, brewing a perfect cup of tea is a science with many heavily nuanced variables.

Although most instructions and tutorials advise measuring your tea out in teaspoons or tablespoons, we’ve got news for you: measure by weight, not volume. Why? Whether that teaspoon is level or heaping, no two teas are created — or shaped — equally. Volume will never give you consistency in your infusion, but weight will.

A teaspoon of a balled tea like a Chin Shin Oolong or Jasmine Pearl doesn’t measure up to a teaspoon of a stringy Longjing (Dragon Well) tea. Likewise, many types of tea are not uniform in shape, so a teaspoon might result in getting a lot of bits but not many whole-leaf pieces.

So when you’re brewing your favorite tea, put it in the context of baking. You wouldn’t substitute one cup of white flour (130 grams) for one cup of cake flour (120 grams), because the two have different weights and a difference of 10 grams could sabotage the recipe with little effort. The same goes for your favorite tea.

Just consider how different each of the following teas, pictured at 3 grams each, would be if they had been measured in teaspoons or tablespoon.

Top: Jade Oolong, Darjeeling, Sencha + Bottom: Silver Needle, Spring Iris, Wild Purple Heart

After testing and consulting with tea masters for years, we recommend using 3 grams of loose leaf for brewing a consistent 8-ounce (240 mL) cup of just about any tea. Be sure to use a scale that has a high level of precision, such as this one (it’s the one we use to measure tea for brewing at home). Although we think 3 grams will result in the most properly infused cup of tea, note that the quantity of tea you use can vary depending on the brewing method, whether it’s Western style with a teapot or infuser or something more traditional, like the Chinese gaiwan.

With all of the variables involved in tea making, be sure to stay tuned for upcoming mini courses here on the blog on teaware, how to choose and prepare water for brewing, and just how long you should be steeping different types of tea.

Note: Pu-erh tea is in a league all its own when it comes to brewing. Watch this video for more on how the tea is separated from the cake and measured.

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