Why Tea Measured in Spoons Doesn't Work
Somebody handed you a bag of loose leaf tea and a set of instructions, and the instructions said one tablespoon.
Here is the problem with that tablespoon. It is a volume, and volume is a terrible way to measure leaf tea, because the same volume of two different teas can be a wildly different amount of actual tea. Not a little different. A spoonful of jasmine green and a spoonful of rooibos can differ by a factor of three in weight, and even in flavor.
If you have ever had a cup of tea that was too weak and then a second one, a few minutes later, that was too strong, the spoon was the reason.
The same spoon, two completely different teas
Picture three teas, all measured with the same tablespoon.
Jasmine green tea. Whole, flat leaves, loosely rolled. They take up a lot of space and weigh very little. A tablespoon of jasmine is roughly 2 grams.
Rooibos. Long, needle-like strands that pack down into a dense tangle. A tablespoon of rooibos is closer to 3 grams, and rooibos is a tea you can over-steep without it turning bitter, so most people push it further and end up with a heavy cup.
Matcha. Finely milled stone powder that has been sifted to remove the stems. It does not resemble a spoonful of anything else in the kitchen. A "tablespoon" of matcha is about 1.5 grams, and it is the most expensive gram-per-spoon of anything on your counter.
Rolled oolong. Tight little pellets that expand to four or five times their size once they hit hot water. A tablespoon of dry pellets looks like a third of what you need, and then it blooms into a pot that is three times too full.
Same spoon. Different weights, different densities, different expansion, different flavor on the other side.
Why density is the whole issue
Volume is a poor proxy for weight in anything loose and dry, and tea is not an exception — it is the rule. Density is how much space a given weight of material takes up, and tea density swings by origin and by style.
Firmly rolled teas, like gunpowder green or a tight oolong, are dense. Long whole-leaf teas, like a silver needle white or a whole-leaf jasmine, are airy. Broken leaf and fannings — the dust that falls off during processing — are dense and also extract fast, which is another reason volume-measured dust tends to over-steep.
Add a second variable and it gets worse: leaf shape changes how much surface area is exposed to water. A flat, broken leaf gives up its flavor fast. A tightly rolled pellet opens slowly and then dumps everything at once in the middle of a steep. Even at identical weights, the two will not behave the same.
So the tablespoon is measuring space, and what you care about is how much leaf is in the water and how fast it gives it up.
Weigh it instead, in grams
A basic kitchen scale costs less than a bag of coffee, and it changes the tea. This is the single cheapest upgrade in the whole hobby.
Here are the numbers we would put on your counter as a starting point, for a single 8 oz (240 ml) cup:
| Tea | Grams per cup | Steep | |---|---|---| | Black tea | 2–3 g | 3–4 min | | Green tea | 1.5–2 g | 1.5–2 min | | Jasmine green | 2 g | 2 min | | Oolong (rolled) | 3–4 g | 2–3 min | | White tea | 2–3 g | 3 min | | Rooibos | 3 g | 5–7 min | | Herbal tisane (our hibiscus berry, mango treat, peach paradise) | 3–4 g | 5–8 min | | Matcha | 2 g | whisk, no steep |
A note on the last line: matcha is not steeped at all. It is whisked into water, so it does not fit in the same category as the others. But the number is still 2 grams, and it matters more than for any other tea on this list, because matcha is the most expensive thing you will measure by eye.
Where do these numbers come from? Mostly from the fact that a good loose-leaf tea is meant to be tasted several times from the same pot. If a single cup is the entire session, you want a little more leaf and a shorter steep. If you plan three cups out of one pot, use the lower end and let the pot go longer, because a rolled oolong that has opened up will keep giving for four or five steeps. Our guide to what a second steeping does has more on that.
The rule that ties the two together
Once you are weighing, the steep time and the dose move together, and this is the part that makes tea forgiving instead of fiddly.
More leaf, shorter steep. Less leaf, longer steep.
That sounds obvious and almost nobody does it, because most recipes fix the time and leave you to adjust the leaf. If your cup is too strong, the instinct is to pull the tea bag out earlier. If your cup is too weak, the instinct is to steep longer. Both are reasonable.
The more flexible version is to fix the time and move the dose. One more gram of leaf steeped for the same amount of time will not make a cup bitter, because there is less time for the leaf to give up the compounds that turn harsh. It will just make it fuller, which is usually what "too weak" actually means.
I like this version because it scales. If you are making a pot for four, you quadruple the leaf and you do not quadruple the steep time.
What if you do not have a scale
Some honest options, in order of how well they work.
Borrow one. Somebody you know owns a kitchen scale. It will be in a drawer somewhere.
Buy a cheap postal scale. These are usually a few dollars, they weigh a gram, and they are accurate enough for tea. A postal scale is arguably better for tea than a kitchen scale, because it sits next to the bag instead of in the middle of your counter.
Use volume, but hold to one rule. Pick the spoons for that specific tea and stop mixing them up. If you always use the same spoon for jasmine, you will be consistent, even if you are not accurate. Consistency beats accuracy when you are the only person brewing.
What to avoid: converting from the back of the bag with a household tablespoon, then guessing. And avoid the "pinch." A pinch of matcha is somewhere between 0.3 and 0.8 grams depending on how pinched.
The second problem: spoons do not change the steeping
There is a reason the spoon is not the only variable. Even a perfectly measured spoonful of green tea steeped for six minutes will taste bitter and grassy, and no amount of measuring fixes that.
Green tea and white tea want cooler water. Black tea and herbal infusions want it hotter. We have a chart of water temperature by tea type that breaks it down by leaf, and the short version is 175°F for greens, 200°F to 205°F for blacks and herbs.
Then the steep itself. Two minutes for a green, five to eight for a rooibos or a fruity herbal. If you get the leaf right and the time wrong, you still have a bad cup.
So: weight the leaf, then time it, then adjust the water. Three things, in that order. Measuring first is what makes the other two adjustable.
What this looks like in our catalog
Our loose-leaf teas are sold by weight, which is the honest way to sell tea. A 3 oz bag of loose leaf is $19.99, and our product pages list it at roughly 28 cups. That works out to about 3 grams a cup, which is a shade above the 2 g I would start with on a delicate green — if you are brewing jasmine and want it delicate, use less than the bag suggests, and if you are brewing rooibos, use more.
Matcha is $24.99 for 1 oz, and one ounce is 28 grams. At 2 grams a cup that is 14 cups, not 28. Our matcha page lists it at about 28 servings because it is listing servings at roughly 1 gram, which is a very light whisked cup. Both numbers are defensible for different cups. This is exactly why the spoon is a bad instrument: nobody is arguing about it, we are just quietly disagreeing about grams.
If you want to try a range without buying four bags, our Taster Flight is three teas at $49.99, which is the cheapest way to find out which direction your taste runs.
And if you want the full walkthrough for a specific leaf, we have how to brew jasmine green tea, how to brew our hibiscus berry tea, how to brew our mango treat herbal tea, and how to brew matcha for someone who has never had it — every one of them has the grams on it.
P.S. The coffee version of this argument, for the scale-averse among you, is in how much coffee is actually one cup — and if you want to know what a single gram is worth, how a one gram difference in dose can change the cup goes further.
Sip slow.
— Seraphina