How many infusions can you drink from black tea?
When enjoying black tea, you might have wondered whether you can infuse the tea leaves again after the first extraction. The desire to savor as much of a delicious tea as possible is understandable.
Unfortunately, the answer is that black tea is typically enjoyed with just the first infusion. Black tea is often brewed with boiling hot water for the first infusion, which extracts the maximum aroma and flavor characteristics. It can be thought of as being produced to showcase its full potential in the first infusion. As a result, subsequent infusions tend to have a somewhat diminished flavor.
In contrast, Japanese green tea can generally be enjoyed for about three infusions. For Japanese tea, the first infusion is typically done at around 70°C to enjoy sweetness and umami, the second infusion at about 80°C to enjoy astringency, and the final third infusion with hot water for a clean taste.
Black tea enthusiasts might feel a bit disappointed by this. However, let’s change the perspective a bit. When brewing 300 ml of tea, the amount of tea leaves used is generally about 3–5 grams for black tea and 7–10 grams for green tea. From this perspective, black tea requires about half to one-third of the amount of tea leaves used for green tea to make the same volume of tea.
Considering the amount of tea leaves and the number of infusions, black tea, enjoyed in a single infusion with a smaller amount of leaves, and green tea, enjoyed in three infusions with a larger amount of leaves, end up providing a similar amount of tea from the same quantity of leaves.
Therefore, it’s not necessarily the ability to be infused multiple times that defines the quality of tea but rather the characteristics of the leaves, production methods, and extraction conditions, which are designed to maximize their unique qualities.
We will continue to introduce various tea characteristics and delicious ways to enjoy them! Thank you for reading.
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