A guide to oolong tea and how to brew it
Oolong sits between green and black tea on the oxidation spectrum, but calling it a middle ground sells it short. It covers the widest range of oxidation of any tea category, and a single cultivar can be taken in dozens of directions depending on how far it is oxidised, how the leaves are rolled, and whether it is roasted.
A light Taiwanese Jin Xuan and a roasted Wuyi Da Hong Pao share a category but almost nothing else when it comes to how they present in the cup.
Four oolongs with different stories
Da Hong Pao is a Wuyi rock tea from Fujian, China, sometimes called the "King of Tea." The roasting process gives it a deep, toasted character with a long finish.
Jin Xuan (also known as Golden Daylily) is a Taiwanese tea often labelled "milk oolong" for its naturally creamy mouthfeel. It uses its own TTES #12 cultivar and brews light, smooth, and approachable.
Tie Guan Yin, also from Fujian, is one of China's most celebrated oolongs. It is known for its complex floral and orchid character that shifts across multiple infusions.
Oriental Beauty is a Taiwanese oolong described as "bug-bitten" because insects interact with the leaves before harvest, triggering a chemical response in the plant. It is one of the most heavily oxidised oolongs, edging close to black tea territory.
Ways to brew oolong
Due to the many different ways in how oolong tea is processed, brewing methods also have a lot of variability. Darker roasted oolongs will tolerate hotter water before they become bitter and astringent, while lighter oolongs will typically prefer water 5-10 degrees cooler. Our brewing guide is summarised below for different methods -
Western style
The simpler method. Using 2 to 3 grams of leaf per 200ml of water heated to 85 to 95 degrees Celsius. Steep for 2 to 3 minutes. You get one long extraction that draws out the tea's full depth in a single cup.
No temperature-controlled kettle? After boiling, water drops to around 90°C in about five minutes. Or pour boiled water through a room-temperature vessel to lose roughly 5 to 10 degrees with each transfer.
Gongfu style
Gongfu uses more leaf and less water: roughly 5 grams per 100ml, brewed in a gaiwan or small clay teapot at 85 to 95 degrees Celsius. The first infusion is short, around 20 seconds, with each subsequent steep adding 5 to 15 seconds.
Ball-rolled oolongs like Tie Guan Yin benefit from a brief hot rinse before the first steep to help the tightly rolled leaves begin to unfurl.
The reward is range. Where a Western brew gives you one composite cup, gongfu spreads the tea across many, each steep revealing a different facet. Most oolongs will last at least 3 or 4 infusions this way. Some can stretch past 10, with the flavours shifting as different compounds extract at different rates.
Keeping track
Oolong responds to small adjustments. A few degrees of water temperature or five extra seconds of steeping time can change the cup noticeably. Keeping even a rough log of your parameters (leaf weight, water temperature, steep time) makes it easier to repeat the cups you enjoy and adjust the ones that fell flat.
In our tea testing we regularly keep track of what we're changing and what we're tasting, and it's easy enough to apply the same logic at your kitchen bench (though much more informally!) Change one variable at a time, note the result, improve the next round.
Where to start
If oolong is new to you, try two teas from opposite ends of the oxidation spectrum. A Jin Xuan (light, creamy, floral) alongside a Da Hong Pao (dark, roasted, deep) will demonstrate just how wide this single category runs. Brew both gongfu if you're curious. The first three infusions of each will tell you more about oolong than any written description.
Experimentation is part of the process. We ship our teas with a suggested Western brewing parameters, but adjusting and experimenting with temperature and time is where oolong gets interesting.
