Chinese tea brewing timer. The 6 traditional tea categories (green/black/oolong/white/dark/yellow) with water temperature, leaf ratio, and steeping time per infusion. Live countdown + audio beep.
Chinese Tea Brewing Timer (中国茶冲泡计时器)
How to use
Choose your tea category
Six classical categories: green, white, yellow, oolong, black, dark/pu-erh. Each has its own water temperature and steeping schedule.
Heat water + weigh leaves
Use the displayed parameters: temperature (80-100°C) and leaf-to-water ratio (3-8g of leaf per 150ml of water).
Hit "Start timer"
Countdown beeps at the end. Pour out the tea into a sharing pitcher (or your cup) and prepare the next infusion.
Click "Next infusion"
Each subsequent infusion uses a longer time (as flavour weakens with each brew). Most teas yield 4-9 infusions.
How to brew each type of Chinese tea, and why the charts disagree
Chinese teas are usually grouped into six types by how they are processed: green tea is heated early to stop oxidation; white tea is only withered and dried; yellow tea adds a sealed "yellowing" step; oolong is bruised and partly oxidised; black tea (红茶, "red tea" in Chinese) is fully oxidised; and dark tea, including ripe pu-erh, is piled or aged after processing.
The schedules in this timer
Oolong and dark tea use gongfu brewing: plenty of leaf and short steeps that lengthen each time. Green, white, yellow and black tea use a moderate amount of leaf in a gaiwan, with steeps of half a minute to two minutes. Across all six, steeps run from 10 seconds to about 2½ minutes. Press "Rinse 5 sec" first if you rinse; the rinse is not counted as a steep.
Why the charts disagree
We compared 11 published sources (four expert recommendations and seven vendor charts) and 2 standards cell by cell. For ripe and aged dark tea, every range includes boiling water, and mostly put green tea around 80 °C. Black tea splits them: half use boiling water, half 85–90 °C. The biggest difference is the amount of leaf: gongfu charts use roughly two to three times what a cup brew does.
China's GB/T 23776-2018 and the international ISO 3103 are methods for grading tea: they brew every type, green included, with boiling water. GB/T 23776 steeps green tea for 4 minutes and black, white and yellow for 5; ISO 3103 steeps black for 6 and green for 5. They exist to compare teas side by side, not to tell you how to brew one to drink.
At altitude, water does not reach 100 °C
Boiling point falls about 1 °C for every 300 m: about 95 °C at 1,500 m in the Cameron Highlands and about 94 °C in Kunming. There, steep longer rather than trying for more heat.
The grading standards brew green tea at a boil; drinking charts never do
The oldest tea leaves found so far come from the Han Yangling mausoleum, about 2,100 years old. Shennong discovering tea is a legend.
Most of the world's words for tea come from two Chinese pronunciations: Min Nan te (English tea, Malay teh) and cha (Portuguese chá, from Cantonese via Macao). In a comparison of 230 languages, 36 still use some other word.
Lu Yu's Classic of Tea (茶經, about 760 CE) is the oldest surviving book devoted to tea.
Judging water by "crab eyes" and "pine wind" comes from the Song dynasty, as in a poem Su Shi wrote in 1072. No old text gives a temperature; turning the stages into degrees is a modern, rough estimate.
Dong Ding oolong grows at 600 to 1,200 m, a mid-elevation tea; Taiwan's "high-mountain" teas usually mean 1,000 m and up, such as Alishan and Lishan.
How much caffeine a cup has depends mostly on how much leaf you use and for how long; it varies more within one type of tea than between types.
The claim that a 30-second rinse removes most of the caffeine is often credited to a 1996 study, which never tested a rinse; it measured three 5-minute brews.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Roughly, but it is hard. A spoonful weighs very different amounts by leaf shape: fluffy white tea may be about 1 g, tightly rolled oolong 4 to 5 g. A kitchen scale solves it.
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The old way is to watch the bubbles: small ones (crab eyes), strings of bubbles (fish eyes), the rushing sound just before a boil (pine wind), then a full boil. Any conversion to degrees is rough. Water left a minute or two off the boil is roughly 85–90 °C.
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It depends on you and the tea. Pu-erh, dark and compressed teas are often given a quick rinse; green and white teas usually are not. The timer's "Rinse 5 sec" does not count as a steep.
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No, it carries on from the time left. To restart a steep, press Reset or Next infusion.
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Yes: the countdown is worked out from the clock, so it shows the right time as soon as you return. A phone browser may not sound the beep in the background, so stay on the page if you need the sound.
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The sound is switched on when you press Start; check the volume and silent switch. The screen also shows "Done ✓", and phones that support it vibrate.
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A gaiwan (about 150 ml) works for everything, and porcelain holds no flavour. Clay teapots are often kept for oolong and dark tea, and a glass shows green tea leaves opening. The timer's leaf amounts assume 150 ml.
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