How much loose tea per cup?

[Jennifer Murphy]

I'm thinking about trying some loose tea as an alternative to the tea bags I currently use. Adagio and others have loose tea in tins. They say how much the tea weighs, but there's not much information on how much to use per cup.

Adagio does say how much a cup will cost. From that I can calculate how much tea by weight to use per cup. The gunpowder tea, one of my favorites, is $29 for a 24 oz tin, which they say works out to $0.10/cup. That means it will make 290 cups or about 0.0828 ounces/cup or 2.35 grams/cup. I checked a few other teas and they all came out to between 2.27 and 2/35 grams/cup.

Is that about right?

And I assume this is for a 6 oz cup, right?

That would mean that I would need about 6.05-6.26 grams of tea for my 16 oz thermos.

[debunix]

loose leaf teas vary a lot inn density, but weight gives a more accurate guide for how much to use when you're getting started. You'll find that a wide variation here in quantities people use per oz or tea, depending on the tea, but more particularly whether the tea is going to be brewed 'western style'--one long infusion--or gongfu cha--multiple infusions, with steep times of seconds to a few minutes. Your mention of a thermos makes things trickier, though, because if you're going to drop leaves in and drink the tea with them in there, you might want even less.

What kind of teas are you drinking?

[Nu2Tea]

This is an interesting topic for me as well. I'm coming from more of a coffee background. Where the water is more precisely measured as is the coffee.

So I'm finding it sort of odd that brewing tea doesn't seem to be as precise. One teaspoon of tea is never the same as another. Even when you're using the same tea, each teaspoon seems to be different. Never mind when you use different teas. It would seem to me, that you'd need a weight of tea per so many ounces or grams of water. Something much more standardized. This would simplify things for you, especially when you are just beginning your tea journey.

So if there is some sort of guide of how much tea per amount of water, I'd love to hear about it.

[bonescwa]

Just experiment and develop an instinct about it, why make it into a science project?! it's just tea

[Nu2Tea]

Lol, yes that's true.

In the end I'm sure that's what everyone does. But for someone just beginning, it's nice to have a starting point, where you know you're in the right ball park, and you kind of know this is what it's supposed to taste like. Then from that, you can figure if you'd like it stronger or weaker.

[Rui]

It depends on many factors: individual taste (as already mentioned), type of tea, age of the tea, size of cup, etc.

My favourite type of tea is raw pu'er and my standard portion is 5.5 - 7 gms of tea leaves for a 130ml gaiwan which does not get completely full of water.

Sometimes when I drink oolong I tend to add a bit more for a vessel of the same size as the gaiwan.

[debunix]

I start with about 1 gram per 25-30mL water when working with a new tea, but that's planning for multiple infusions, where it's easy to adjust the infusion times if the first infusion is too strong or too weak.

[Nu2Tea]

Thanks for the replies.

What would you consider a standard or good starting point, for most teas, if you are doing a regular western style brew (just one steep) with 8 ounces water?

[BW85]

Thanks for the replies.

What would you consider a standard or good starting point, for most teas, if you are doing a regular western style brew (just one steep) with 8 ounces water?

Try a healthy teaspoon for balled oolongs and small leaf green and black teas. A heaping tablespoon for stripe oolongs like yancha and larger leaf green like dragon well

Ideally that should get you around 3 grams