For everyday Western brewing, use roughly 1 gram of loose leaf tea per 100 ml of water, which comes to about 2.5 grams in a standard 250 ml (8 oz) mug. Gongfu brewing in a small pot or gaiwan uses far more leaf, 5 to 7 grams per 100 ml, with steeps counted in seconds instead of minutes.
The short version
- Western brewing: 1 g of leaf per 100 ml of water. About 2.5 g in a normal mug.
- Gongfu brewing: 5 to 7 g per 100 ml, short steeps, many of them.
- Teaspoons are a bad unit for tea. A level spoon of rolled oolong can weigh twice what a spoon of twisted black tea weighs.
- Bitterness usually comes from time and water temperature, not from too much leaf.
- A cheap kitchen scale ends the guessing permanently. It is the best brewing upgrade most people can make.
In this post
The Western ratio: 1 gram per 100 ml
If you remember one number, remember this one. One gram of dry leaf for every 100 millilitres of water. Everything else on this page is a variation on it.
It is close to the ratio used in ISO 3103, the international standard for preparing tea for sensory testing, which calls for 2 grams of tea per 100 ml. That standard exists so tasters in different labs can compare the same tea fairly, not because a committee decided it tastes best. I find 2 g per 100 ml too strong for drinking, and most tasters do too. It is built to expose faults in a tea, which is a different job from enjoying one.
So: 1 g per 100 ml as your default. Nudge up if you like a fuller cup, down if you are drinking a delicate green all afternoon.
The tea-to-water ratio cheat sheet
Weights are for dry leaf. Teaspoon figures are approximate and depend heavily on leaf shape, which is the whole problem with teaspoons. Steep times are for the first Western infusion.
| Tea | Per 250 ml mug | Rough teaspoons | First steep | Gongfu, per 100 ml |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green (Longjing, Biluochun) | 2 to 3 g | 1 to 1.5 tsp | 2 to 3 min | 3 to 4 g |
| Jasmine green | 2 to 3 g | 1 to 1.5 tsp | 2 to 3 min | 3 to 4 g |
| White (Moonlight, Silver Needle) | 2.5 to 3 g | 1.5 to 2 tsp | 3 to 4 min | 4 to 5 g |
| Rolled oolong (Tie Guan Yin) | 3 g | about 1 tsp | 3 to 4 min | 6 to 7 g |
| Strip oolong (Da Hong Pao) | 3 g | 1.5 tsp | 3 to 4 min | 5 to 6 g |
| Black (Dianhong, Keemun) | 2.5 to 3 g | 1 to 1.5 tsp | 3 to 4 min | 5 g |
| Sheng (raw) pu-erh | 3 g | 1.5 tsp | 2 to 3 min | 5 to 6 g |
| Shou (ripe) pu-erh | 3 to 4 g | 1.5 tsp | 3 to 4 min | 6 to 7 g |
| Cold brew (any type) | 1 g per 100 ml | as above | 6 to 8 h, fridge | not applicable |
Notice how little movement there is in that first column. Between the lightest green and the heaviest shou pu-erh, the Western ratio only shifts from about 2 g to about 4 g. Tea is more forgiving than the internet suggests.
Why teaspoons lie
Almost every tea instruction in English says "one teaspoon per cup". A teaspoon is a measure of volume, and dry tea leaf is mostly air. How much air depends entirely on how the leaf was shaped, which means a teaspoon of one tea and a teaspoon of another can differ by a factor of three.
| Leaf shape | Example | Approx. grams per level teaspoon |
|---|---|---|
| Tightly rolled balls | Tie Guan Yin | 3 to 4 g |
| Small broken particles | contents of a supermarket teabag | 2.5 to 3 g |
| Fine curled and downy | Biluochun | 2 to 3 g |
| Flat pressed spears | Longjing | 2 to 2.5 g |
| Long twisted strips | Dianhong | 1.5 to 2 g |
| Large open leaf | Sheng pu-erh, Moonlight White | 1 to 1.5 g |
Treat those as ballpark figures rather than gospel; they shift with harvest and grade. But the pattern holds, and it explains a lot of disappointing cups. If you measure a spoon of big fluffy Moonlight White the way you measure a spoon of dense rolled oolong, you are brewing at roughly a third of the strength and then blaming the tea.
Our Dragon Well is a good example. The leaves are pan-fired flat, like little pressed spears, so they stack neatly in a spoon and weigh more than their bulk suggests. Same spoon, different tea, different cup.
Gongfu ratios are a different animal
Gongfu brewing turns the ratio on its head: a lot of leaf, a little water, and steeps of ten to thirty seconds. You are not trying to extract everything at once. You are taking thin slices of the tea, one after another, and watching how it changes.
For a 100 ml gaiwan, 5 g is a sensible middle. Rolled oolongs want more because they take a steep or two to open. Big-leaf sheng wants a little less than you would think because it gives up a lot fast. I have written more about the method in gongfu tea without the gatekeeping, and about the vessel itself in what is a gaiwan.
The honest trade-off: gongfu gives you more from the same leaf, and it needs your attention for fifteen minutes. Western brewing gives you a mug and your morning back.
Scaling up: pots, carafes and cold brew
The arithmetic is the easy part. Divide the millilitres by 100, and that is your grams.
| Vessel | Water | Leaf at 1 g per 100 ml |
|---|---|---|
| Small teacup | 150 ml | 1.5 g |
| Standard mug | 250 ml (8 oz) | 2.5 g |
| Large mug or travel bottle | 350 ml | 3.5 g |
| Small teapot | 500 ml | 5 g |
| Large pot or carafe | 1 litre | 10 g |
| Cold-brew bottle | 1 litre | 8 to 10 g, 6 to 8 hours in the fridge |
Two caveats worth knowing. If you are brewing a big pot and leaving the leaves in while people drink it slowly, drop to about 0.8 g per 100 ml, because the tea keeps extracting in the pot. And for cold brew you can be generous with the leaf without much risk, since cold water pulls out far less of the bitter compounds than hot water does. There is a fuller breakdown in our cold brew tea guide.
When to break the ratio
My grandmother never weighed anything in her life. She kept tea in an enamel tin, took a pinch between three fingers, dropped it into a tall glass and topped it up with hot water all day. That is grandpa style, it is how a very large share of China actually drinks tea, and the ratio is roughly "cover the bottom of the glass". It works because you keep adding water before the leaves get a chance to turn harsh.
So break the ratio when:
- You are brewing grandpa style. Use less leaf than you think, maybe 0.5 g per 100 ml, and keep topping up.
- You want milk in it. Milk mutes tea, so go up by about a third for a black tea you plan to whiten. Although with a good Dianhong I would try it black first.
- You are resteeping. Add a few seconds to each subsequent steep rather than adding leaf.
- The tea is old or has been open a long time. Faded tea needs a little more leaf to say anything at all.
One thing I would not do is fix bitterness by using less leaf. Bitterness almost always comes from water that was too hot or a steep that ran too long. Cutting the leaf gives you a cup that is both bitter and thin. Fix the temperature and the timer first; the full method is in our guide to brewing loose leaf tea.
FAQ
What is the correct tea-to-water ratio?
About 1 gram of loose leaf tea per 100 ml of water for Western brewing, so roughly 2.5 g in a 250 ml mug. Gongfu brewing uses 5 to 7 g per 100 ml with much shorter steeps. Adjust within those ranges to taste.
How many grams of tea per cup?
For a standard 250 ml (8 oz) cup, 2 to 3 grams covers nearly every tea. Use the lower end for delicate greens and whites, the higher end for shou pu-erh, roasted oolongs and anything you plan to add milk to.
How many teaspoons of loose leaf tea per cup?
One to one and a half level teaspoons per 250 ml cup is a fair starting point, but the weight of a teaspoon varies hugely with leaf shape. Rolled oolong can be three times heavier per spoon than large-leaf pu-erh, so weigh it if you can.
Does more tea leaf make tea bitter?
Not usually. More leaf makes tea stronger and thicker. Bitterness and astringency come mostly from water that is too hot and steeps that run too long. If your cup is harsh, lower the temperature or shorten the time before touching the ratio.
Is the cold brew ratio different?
Only slightly. Use around 1 gram per 100 ml, or 8 to 10 grams per litre, and leave it in the fridge for 6 to 8 hours. Cold water extracts less of the bitter compounds, so a heavier hand is much safer than it would be with boiling water.
If you want to test all of this against a few different leaf shapes, pick two or three from the loose leaf collection — a rolled oolong, a flat green and a pu-erh will argue with each other nicely.