Is there a settled way of brewing hojicha at its best?

Chapter 3 · 4 of 4 sections readable now

Illustration of a teapot, tea, scales and a timer used to check brewing instructions

The conditions are settled. What settled them was not the measurement of compounds but a tasting ranking from fifty years ago.

How to brew hojicha: who decided on 90°C and 30 seconds

Boiling water for thirty seconds, says the packet, and another pair of figures turns up everywhere else. Where both came from, and how far today's published brewing guides drift apart, traced back to an old tasting record.

Leaf goes into the pot, water over it, and the timer opens. The packet says boiling water, thirty seconds. Look up how to brew hojicha, though, and a cooler water with twice the wait keeps coming back. A thin thread of steam rises from the hole in the lid.

What follows is how that figure was settled, and how unevenly today's guides agree with it, one step at a time.

A tasting by a handful of people

Cups set out in a row, a small sip from each in turn. That is the kind of table the figure came from. Thirty seconds was never worked out by measuring what is in the leaf.

An old trade-body report lists researchers from national and regional experiment stations on its committee. Tea bought from ordinary shops was brewed with the water's heat and the wait moved a little at a time. A small group tasted it in summer and in winter and put the cups in order. The rank totals went through a statistical test, and only conditions too consistent to be chance were kept.

"Best" here does not mean the condition that draws the most out of the leaf. The record supports only the order a panel of tasters chose, long ago. After the tasters comes the table their figures were copied into.

A sencha row and a hojicha row

Open an old table and thin rules divide it tea by tea, one line each. The longer time so often quoted belongs not to hojicha but to the line for everyday sencha.

In the national food composition tables too, hojicha sits with bancha and genmaicha, and its wait is half that of sencha. A school-lunch menu book reprints the same pairing, its source named. A longer time reaches the hojicha row only in the table for the second infusion.

The remarks column of the national table holds a single line about earlier analyses and an older edition. The record supports only that the two teas sat on separate lines from the start. After the lines comes the heat of the water.

Water poured across once

Pour water from the kettle into an earthenware pot and the steam from the spout settles a little. The water heat in the table is one a kitchen can reach without a thermometer.

The old report says boiling water poured once into such a pot comes to about ninety degrees. From there it goes straight into the pot holding the tea. That passage explains how to cool water, though; the level itself was picked by tasting against other temperatures.

The record supports only that this heat is easy to make at home. After the heat comes the reason for boiling water.

Fire scent at the edge of the lid

Pour on boiling water and a toasted smell slips out from under the lid. The advice to use boiling water for hojicha is after that scent, not after how much dissolves.

A guide on a government ministry's site says bancha and roasted tea are for enjoying the scent of the fire rather than the taste. Boiling water follows from that.

The guide gives no figure for how much the aroma gains. The record supports only that the aim is the scent. After the scent comes the spread among today's guides.

The backs of packets, drifting

Line up the brewing notes from many packets and the figures slide out of step. The guidance published today does not agree.

Set the guides of merchants, makers and public bodies side by side in the table below, and both the wait and the strength differ several times over. Even within one company, the brewing page and the page on water temperature describe the heat differently.

None of the sources decides which figure is right. The record supports only that the range exists. What lies inside that range is set out in figures further down.

Figure 3-1-1Published conditions for brewing hojicha (2 public documents plus 29 guides collected; the 27 with figures compared, the range from 26)

Source	Weight of leaf	Volume of water	Water temperature (as written)	Time	Leaf per 100 mL (calculated)
Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan 2020 (Eighth Revised Edition)	15 g	650 mL	90°C	0.5 min	2.3 g
“A Study of Tea Brewing Methods” (1973), Table 7, standard infusion methods	15 g	650 mL	boiling water	30 sec	2.3 g
Shiga Prefectural Tea Industry Council (kettle)	10 g	1 L	—	30 sec	1.0 g
Nakamura Tokichi Honten (kettle, simmered)	40 g	2–3 L	boiling	about 2 min	1.3–2.0 g
City of Fuji, Shizuoka	3 g (per person)	150–200 mL	boiling water at 100°C	30 sec	1.5–2.0 g
Fukujuen (hinome bō-hojicha)	3 g	180 mL	water brought to the boil	about 1 min	1.7 g
Lupicia (Karigane Nikki)	2.5–3 g	150 mL	boiling water	2–2.5 min	1.7–2.0 g
Ito En (Ocha Hyakka, brewing page)	4 g	200 mL	95°C	30 sec	2.0 g
Lupicia (Shigaraki aged hojicha and others)	3–4 g	150 mL	boiling water	30 sec–1 min	2.0–2.7 g
Ujitawara Seichajo	6–8 g	200–300 mL	about 90–100 degrees	about 30 sec	2.0–4.0 g
Maruhachi Seichajo (Kenjō Kaga Bōcha, loose leaf)	6 g	260 mL	boiling water	25 sec	2.3 g
Maruhachi Seichajo (Kaga hojicha, loose leaf)	6 g	260 mL	boiling water	30 sec	2.3 g
Fukujuen (hojicha range)	3 g	130 mL	boiling water	about 30 sec	2.3 g
Arai Seicha (kuki-hojicha)	3 g (per person)	130 cc (per person)	boiling water	30 sec–1 min	2.3 g
Maiko no Cha Honpo	15 g	about 650 mL	boiling water	30 sec	2.3 g
Saitama Prefectural Tea Industry Association	9 g (for three)	390 mL	boiling water	30 sec	2.3 g
World Green Tea Association	3 g (per person)	130 mL	hot water brought to the boil	about 30 sec	2.3 g
Morinoen	10 g	400 mL	boiling water (100°C)	about 4 min	2.5 g
Kyoto Prefectural Tea Industry Council	10 g	300–400 mL	no temperature given	about 30 sec	2.5–3.3 g
Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten	10–15 g	400 mL	boiling water	30–40 sec	2.5–3.8 g
Minokamo Chaho (direct-fire dark-roast hojicha, loose leaf)	about 5 g	about 180 mL	about 80°C (after cooling)	1 min	2.8 g
Fukujuen (shiroi kuki-hojicha)	4 g	130 mL	boiling water	about 1 min	3.1 g
Nakamura Tokichi Honten (kyusu)	10 g	300 mL	100°C	30–40 sec	3.3 g
Kaneju Farm (bōcha, loose leaf)	4 g (per 100 mL)	—	90°C	40 sec	4.0 g
Kaneju Farm (hojicha, loose leaf)	4 g (per 100 mL)	—	90°C	30 sec	4.0 g
Ippodo Tea (Gokujo Hojicha)	10 g	240 mL	100°C	30 sec	4.2 g
Ippodo Tea (basic bancha-type teas)	10 g	240 mL	100°C	30 sec	4.2 g
Ryuoen Chaho (magazine interview article)	10 g	about 210 cc	water at the boil	20–30 sec	4.8 g
Jurouen	about 8 g	— (for a 540 mL kyusu)	95°C	about 1 min	—
Ujien	—	—	90–100°C	30 sec	—
Shiga Prefectural Tea Industry Council (kyusu)	3–4 g	—	100°C	30 sec	—
Zojirushi (Kakushiaji)	—	about 200 mL	water just off the boil	30 sec	—
Fujita Chaen (hojicha in general)	3–4 g	—	boiling water	30 sec	—
Fujita Chaen (hojicha from first-flush tea)	2–3 g	—	80–90°C	1 min	—
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, “Japan, a Great Tea Nation”	—	—	90–100°C	30 sec–1 min	—
Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council	15 g (for five bowls)	—	boiling water	30 sec	—
JA Kyoto Yamashiro	3 tablespoons	plenty	100°C (the text says water at a rolling boil)	30 sec	—
Japan Tea Instructor Association	—	—	hot water	about 30 sec	—
Japan Tea Central Association	—	—	—	—	no brewing page
Shizuoka Tea Merchants’ Industrial Cooperative	—	—	—	—	no brewing page
Spread (26 guides, excluding the Ryuoen Chaho row)	—	—	80–100°C	25 sec to about 4 min = about tenfold	1.0–4.2 g = about fourfold

Units are g, mL, °C, seconds and minutes. Water temperature is carried as each company writes it; “boiling water” and “water brought to the boil” are not converted into °C. “Leaf per 100 mL” is not a published figure but a value calculated from the weight of leaf and the volume of water. The sources are the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan 2020 (Eighth Revised Edition), Table 7 of the Tea Brewing Research Group’s “A Study of Tea Brewing Methods”, Tea Research Journal 40 (1973), and the public pages of 29 guides from 18 tea merchants and manufacturers and 11 public bodies and organisations, all verified 2026-09-22. The 27 that give figures are compared, leaving out two with no brewing page. The Ryuoen Chaho row comes from a magazine interview article, so the spread in the last row is calculated from the remaining 26.

The numbers in detail

Food composition table: the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan 2020 (Eighth Revised Edition). Hojicha is grouped with bancha, genmaicha and oolong. Its infusion is 15 g, 650 mL, 90°C, 0.5 minutes; sencha is 10 g, 430 mL, 90°C, 1 minute. The remarks column says only that it was determined from analytical values and the Fourth Revised Edition.
School-lunch menus: “Twelve Months of Tea School-Lunch Menus”, on the Japan Tea Central Association website, cites “Tea Brewing Research Group: Tea Research Journal (1973)”. Roasted tea is boiling water for 30 seconds; sencha of standard grade is 90°C for 60 seconds. Sixty seconds reaches the hojicha row only in a separate table, for the second infusion.
The original report: “A Study of Tea Brewing Methods”, Tea Brewing Research Group, Tea Research Journal 40 (1973). The Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council led it, with committee members from the tea experiment stations of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and of Shizuoka Prefecture. The samples were finished teas bought from six shops in the city of Shizuoka.
How the tasting ran: water temperature in 10°C steps over three or four levels, fifteen runs in all, and infusion time in 30-second steps. In summer and in winter, six to eleven people (seven to eleven, in its summary) ranked the cups in a preliminary and a final round. Conditions rated significantly good on a test of rank totals were adopted.
The 90°C passage: the same report says boiling water poured once into a dobin comes to around 90°C and can then go into the pot holding the tea.
Why boiling water: a PDF on the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries website, “How to Brew Delicious Tea”. It says bancha and roasted tea are for enjoying the toasted aroma of firing and roasting rather than savouring the flavour, so boiling water is used.
The 29 guides: 29 guides were collected from 18 tea merchants and manufacturers and 11 public bodies and organisations. Leaving out two with no brewing page, the 27 that give figures are compared, and the range is taken from 26, leaving out one that comes from a magazine interview. The wait runs from 25 seconds to about 4 minutes, about tenfold; leaf per 100 mL runs from 1.0 g to 4.2 g, about fourfold. Verified 2026-09-22.
One company, two figures: Ito En gives hojicha 95°C on its brewing page and “boiling water at 100 degrees” on its page about water temperature.

Sources

Updated 27 October 2026This section on its own page

Hojicha water temperature by roast level: should a deeper roast be brewed differently?

Light-roast and dark-roast packets look nothing alike, yet the brewing notes on the back are usually the same. Whether any guide brews by roast depth, and what the one that splits its figures actually splits them by.

Illustration of two teapot-and-cup sets containing lighter- and darker-coloured tea

A light roast and a dark roast stand side by side on a shop shelf. Through the window in each packet the leaf looks like a different tea altogether. Turn them over, though, and the brewing figures have not moved.

What follows is a search for guidance that brews by roast depth, and for the axis on which the figures really change: the shelf, the sellers' words, then the research.

One line on the back

Turn two packets over and the small print of their brewing notes wears the same face. Guidance that sets a different water or time by roast depth does not turn up among what is published.

Merchants and public bodies that publish brewing figures were checked, and none of them writes separate figures by depth. A single guide does publish two sets, and its axis is not the roast but the season of the leaf. Ordinary hojicha gets boiling water and a short wait; hojicha made from first-flush leaf gets cooler water and a longer one. The reason given is that second- and third-flush leaf carries less of the savoury components.

That one case is a single tea farm's published figures, not a rule of the trade. The record supports only that the season of the leaf, rather than the words light and dark, is what figures follow today. The split is laid out in the table below. After the figures come the words on packets sharing a shelf.

Figure 3-2-1The words on the packet, and the axis the figures actually divide on

Axis	Division	Published brewing conditions
Words on the front of the packet	Light roast	None of the 27 with figures sets them by roast (across guides: 80–100°C, 25 seconds to about 4 minutes)
Words on the front of the packet	Dark roast	None of the 27 with figures sets them by roast (across guides: 80–100°C, 25 seconds to about 4 minutes)
The axis the figures move on (Fujita Chaen, 1 guide)	Second- and third-flush leaf = hojicha in general	3–4 g, boiling water, 30 seconds
The axis the figures move on (Fujita Chaen, 1 guide)	First-flush leaf = hojicha from first-flush tea	2–3 g, 80–90°C, 1 minute

Units are g, °C, seconds and minutes. The first two rows record what was found when 29 guides were collected (18 tea merchants and manufacturers plus 11 public bodies and organisations, verified 2026-09-22) and the 27 that give figures were compared: not one writes a different temperature or time for a different depth of roast. The range of temperature and time is taken from 26 of them, leaving out one that comes from a magazine interview. The last two rows are the published figures of a single guide, Fujita Chaen’s “Ocha Biyori”, and are not a rule for the trade. Water temperature is carried as each company writes it.

One way to brew, one shelf

A light-roast hojicha and a hojicha of karigane stems sit on one shop's shelf. Sold side by side, they still share one set of brewing notes.

The shop's instructions are a single set used across its site. A few guides do recommend cooler water, and none of them gives roast depth as the reason. The difference in taste, meanwhile, is put into words. One merchant calls the light roast a refined toastiness that keeps green tea's savour, and the dark roast a toastiness with a faint sweetness.

Yet neither that article nor the product page names a water temperature or a time. The record supports only that taste is told apart in words while the water is not. After the shelf come two packets that are often cited.

Pale stems and a direct-fire dark roast

Pale stem tea, and leaf roasted nearly black. The two are often brought out to compare roast depths. They cannot stand in for each other.

The lightly roasted stem tea is to be brewed short with boiling water, the direct-fire dark roast a little longer with cooler water. The depths run opposite, but the raw material and the amount of leaf differ too: they are separate products. That the words light and dark have no shared standard across shops is taken up in Chapter 6.

The record supports only that the two are brewed differently, not that depth is the reason. After the products comes a cup on the research side.

What research moves is the clock

In the laboratory, identical cups stand in a row and only the hands of the clock move. What gets varied there is the time, not the depth.

One report took several teas including hojicha, changed only the wait, and repeated the infusion. The longer it steeped, the more dissolved, until the amount levelled off.

The water for hojicha was held at the boil; its heat was never moved. The record supports only how time works. After the clock comes a comparison under matched conditions.

Matched pots, only the depth changed

The same pot, the same amount of leaf, water at the same heat. On a table set like that, only the difference in depth should reach the cup.

So the comparison begins with a light roast and a dark roast made from the same raw material, under matched conditions. Only the depth and the wait are moved. Aroma, astringency and sweetness are ranked with the labels hidden, and the colour is noted too.

The results are not written here yet. The record supports only the shape of the comparison. Its exact conditions are set out below.

The numbers in detail

The 29 guides checked: 29 guides were collected from 18 tea merchants and manufacturers and 11 public bodies and organisations, and the 27 that give figures were compared, leaving out two with no brewing page. None writes a different temperature or time by roast depth. Verified 2026-09-22.
Split by season: Fujita Chaen's “Ocha Biyori” is the one case. Ordinary hojicha is 3–4 g, boiling water, 30 seconds; hojicha from first-flush leaf is 2–3 g, 80–90°C, 1 minute. It says the former is made from second- or third-flush leaf, with fewer savoury components.
One set for one shelf: Maiko no Cha Honpo sells a light-roast hojicha and a karigane hojicha side by side. Its brewing instruction is one set for the whole site: 15 g, 650 mL of boiling water, 30 seconds.
The two at 80°C: two of the 27 with figures recommend a temperature in the 80s, and neither gives roast depth as the reason.
Taste in words: the descriptions are Ryuhoen's. The light roast has “a refined toasty aroma that makes the most of green tea's savour”; the dark roast “the toastiness of a strong roast with a faint sweetness”. Neither the article nor the product page gives a temperature or a time.
The stem tea: Maruhachi Seichajo's Kenjō Kaga Bōcha, a lightly roasted stem tea. 6 g with 260 mL of boiling water for 25 seconds.
The dark roast: Minokamo Chaho's direct-fire dark-roast hojicha. About 5 g with 180 mL at about 80°C for 1 minute.
Research on time: Yoneda and Katō's 1994 report. Six kinds of tea including hojicha, infusion times from 0.5 to 4 minutes, three infusions each. The amounts dissolved rose with time and levelled off at 3–4 minutes. The water for hojicha was held at the boil.
The planned comparison: 3 g of leaf, 150 mL of water, 90°C, the same pot. Waits of 30 and 60 seconds, three runs of each condition, twelve brews in all. Aroma, astringency and sweetness ranked blind by three people, recorded with the colour.

Sources

Updated 27 October 2026This section on its own page

Cold brew hojicha and caffeine: what a lower temperature takes out

Brew in cold water and what comes out, and what holds back? The order measured in sencha, set beside the near absence of savoury amino acids in roasted tea, and then how strong the cold-brew guides actually are.

Illustration of a cold-brew pitcher holding tea bags and a glass of cold hojicha

All summer a jug sits on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Leaf and water go in at night, and by morning the water has turned a pale amber. It tastes lighter than the same leaf brewed hot.

What follows is what a lower temperature brings out and what it leaves behind: first in measurements on sencha, then in roasted tea, then in the sellers' guidance.

A light cup from the morning jug

Tip the jug and the cold tea fogs the inside of the glass. At a lower temperature, part of the astringency and the caffeine come out less readily, while the amino acids still come out well.

That order, though, was measured in sencha, before any roasting. Roasted tea has almost none of the savoury components a cold brew would be aiming for.

These measurements describe sencha. After the order come the two faces of astringency.

Heavy astringency and light

A mouthful of cold tea feels softer at the back of the tongue. The source of astringency comes in a heavy kind and a light kind, and the heavy one barely dissolves in cold water.

A national research body measured sencha left in cold water against sencha brewed briefly in hot. The heavy kind came out at only about a fifth, clearly apart from the light kind. Caffeine fell in between; in iced water it dropped further, while the savoury amino acid stayed high.

Those proportions did not change with longer steeping, the report says. The figure below shows sencha, before roasting. After astringency comes cold water and caffeine.

Figure 3-3-1What a lower temperature extracts (sample: sencha; 80°C for 2 minutes = 100)

Epigallocatechin (10°C, 1 hour)	70% (of the amount extracted at 80°C for 2 minutes)
Epigallocatechin gallate (10°C, 1 hour)	20
Caffeine (10°C, 1 hour)	50
Caffeine (0.5°C, 1 hour) = under 20	20
Theanine (0.5°C, 1 hour)	80

Drawn from Monobe M. (2018) JARQ 52(1):1-6. The sample is sencha, and the values are percentages of the amount extracted at 80°C for 2 minutes. The compounds are epigallocatechin (the lighter source of astringency), epigallocatechin gallate (the heavier one), caffeine and theanine. The figures are approximate in the original too, so read them in steps of 20% at most. “Caffeine (0.5°C, 1 hour)” is under 20%, and its bar is drawn at that upper bound of 20. No equivalent measurement uses hojicha as its sample.

Cold water still lets caffeine out

Even in the jug in the fridge, the leaf slowly unfurls. Cold water does not keep the caffeine in.

One report stirred leaf in water at around room temperature and measured as it went. Before long, both caffeine and the lighter astringent kind had dissolved past seven-tenths of what the leaf held. In sencha steeped in still colder water, part of the caffeine came out within a few hours.

Both measurements used sencha. Even in cold water, caffeine was extracted. After sencha comes a cup of roasted tea.

What roasting leaves behind

Roasted leaf smells toasty the moment the packet opens. In roasted tea, the savoury component a low temperature would draw out is nearly gone.

No cold-brew study using roasted tea as its sample could be found. In figures from a regional experiment station, a light roast kept under a tenth of the savoury amino acid in the unroasted leaf, and deeper roasts showed none. Cold water pays off in green tea because it can reach amino acids that dissolve well even cold.

For hojicha, then, lowering the temperature is less a way of drawing things out than a way of letting less out. After the components comes the strength of the sellers' guidance.

Cold-brew guides run thin

Ice clinks in a glass. The sellers' guidance runs two ways: tea steeped in cold water, and tea brewed with boiling water and poured over ice. The cold-water guides sit on the thinner side of the teapot guides.

Line the cold-water guides up and the steeping time runs from tens of minutes to several hours. Where they give the amount of leaf, it is clearly less leaf to water than the teapot guides use. The iced version is built the other way, hot water and a short brew.

So when cold brew is said to have less caffeine, temperature is not the only thing that has moved. The share that dissolves and the amount in one cup are better kept apart. How to keep them apart is taken up in Chapter 1. The detailed figures follow below.

The numbers in detail

Cold-water extraction: Manami Monobe's measurements on sencha, for the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (JARQ 52(1), 2018). With 80°C for 2 minutes as 100, 10°C water for 1 hour gave about 70 for epigallocatechin, about 20 for epigallocatechin gallate, and about 50 for caffeine.
Iced water: in the same report, iced water at 0.5°C for 1 hour gave caffeine under 20 and theanine about 80. Steeping longer did not change the proportions.
Water at 20°C: Horie and colleagues, Tea Research Journal 91 (2001). 1 g of first-flush aracha was stirred in 500 mL of water at 20°C. After 20 minutes, both the caffeine and the lighter astringent component had dissolved past 70% of the amount in the leaf.
Cold brew at 7–8°C: another measurement cited in the same report found 20–50% of the caffeine dissolved within 2 hours, in sencha steeped cold.
Theanine: the Tea Research Station of the Kochi Prefectural Agricultural Technology Center. First-flush leaf (2013), 1.9 g in 200 mL of boiling water for 5 minutes, compared per 100 mL. Against 21.12 mg in the unroasted aracha, the light roast had 1.27 mg; none was detected in the medium and dark roasts.
Poured over ice: Ippodo Tea's iced hojicha, 10 g of leaf with 240 mL at 100°C for 60 seconds.; The seven cold-water guides: steeping times from 20 minutes to 3 hours. The five that give an amount of leaf use 1.0 g to 1.7 g per 100 mL, thinner than the teapot guides' 1.7 g to 4.2 g.
Keeping it: for cold-brewed green tea, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization advises keeping it in the fridge and drinking it within a day.

Sources

Updated 28 October 2026This section on its own page

Hojicha tea bag steeping and second infusions: making today's cup on purpose

To brew last week's cup again, settle the strength first and hold it, then move temperature and time one at a time. Why the guides face opposite ways at the second infusion, and why brewing short and repeating draws out more.

A coloured-pencil and watercolour still life of an unglazed teapot, two cups of hojicha brewed to different strengths, and a teaspoon of leaf on a wooden table.

At the front of the shelf sits a half-used bag of hojicha. Under the clip that closes it is a slip of paper written some time ago. Spoonfuls of leaf, how much water, how long it waited. Keep those three, and last week's cup comes back.

What follows is how to brew a cup on purpose: strength, then heat, then the second infusion, then how infusions add up.

Strength comes first

Scoop leaf with a tea spoon and the dry leaves rustle. The thing to settle first, and leave alone, is the strength.

Make the pairing of leaf and water a figure of one's own. Only then move the heat and the time, one at a time. Do it the other way round and there is no telling which change altered the taste.

No source decides which strength is best. The record supports only the order of the decisions. After the order comes the reason strength leads.

The backs of many packets

Line up the backs of many packets and the amount-of-leaf line drifts the furthest. Strength leads because the guides differ more on strength than on waiting time.

In a table of the published brewing guides, the leaf for a given amount of water varied several times over. Where in that range to set a baseline is for whoever drinks the tea.

How that range of strength affects the taste has not been measured. The record supports only how wide the drift is. After strength come the vessels that set the water's heat.

Each time the water is poured across

From kettle to pot, from pot to teacup. Each pour leaves the rising steam a little thinner. Heat can be made without a thermometer, from the number of vessels and the time spent waiting.

A guide on a government ministry's site says one transfer cools the water by 5–10°C. Boiling water moved into a pot comes to about 90°C, and moved on into a teacup about 80°C. Guides that recommend the 80s add a wait to this ladder. One tea shop says to pour into another vessel and leave it for about 1 minute.

What the record gives is a rough ladder, and no more. After the first infusion comes the water for the second.

At the second infusion, guides turn around

Once the first cup is poured off, the leaves lie open and plump in the pot. From the second infusion on, the guides face opposite ways.

Those that shorten it say to cut the wait below the first, or to pour at once without waiting. Those that raise it say to make the water hotter than the first time. Only the shorteners give a reason: the leaves are already open. None of the guides that cover a second infusion gives a third.

The record supports only that the advice splits. After the guides comes a cup from the measured side.

Brew short, then brew again

Second infusion, third: each pour leaves the cup a shade paler. Brewing short and repeating draws out more in total than stretching the wait.

An old report brewed several teas including hojicha in boiling water at different times, three infusions from the same leaf. Brewing short and repeating came out ahead of one long steep in total. The same leaf in a tea bag is usually meant to be brewed longer and hotter. No seller explains the difference, and no source has measured it.

The record supports only that this is said but not measured. What gets measured first is the roast, in Chapter 4. Keeping notes on each cup is the subject of Chapter 12. The basic method, tool by tool, is set out in How to brew hojicha: teapot, kettle, tea bags and cold brew. The figures are gathered below.

The numbers in detail

Range of strength: set the published brewing guides side by side and the leaf-to-water ratio spreads widely from one to the next. The table is in Hojicha brewing temperature: where 90°C for 30 seconds began.
Cooling ladder: from a PDF on the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries website, “How to Brew Delicious Tea”. One transfer cools by 5–10°C; boiling water moved into a pot is about 90°C, into a teacup about 80°C.
The one-minute wait: Minokamo Chaho says to pour into another vessel and leave it about 1 minute.
Shorter second infusion: the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council gives about a third of the first; Nakamura Tokichi Honten pours without waiting. Fukujuen gives two-thirds as a general rule for any tea.
Hotter second infusion: Minokamo Chaho gives about 80°C for the first infusion and about 90°C for the second.
Reason, and the third: the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council writes that at the second infusion the leaves are open. None of the five guides covering a second infusion gives conditions for a third.
Research on repeating: Yoneda and Katō's 1994 report. 3 g of leaf in each case; for hojicha and bancha, 100 mL of boiling water, 0.5–4 minutes, three infusions from the same leaf.
Tea bags: Maruhachi Seichajo's Kenjō Kaga Bōcha is 25 seconds as loose leaf and 45 seconds in a bag. Minokamo Chaho gives about 80°C for loose leaf and 90°C for the bag.

Sources

Updated 27 October 2026This section on its own page

Column

The other side of the standard figures

What the Tea Brewing Research Group settled in 1973 was not only water temperature and the length of the wait. Read it to the end and a row of decisions appears on the near side of the numbers.

How many servings, first of all. Three for gyokuro and top-grade sencha, five for standard sencha, bancha and hojicha, vessels chosen to suit. The teabowl’s size was settled after consulting a master of the tea ceremony, and it was set down that the better the quality the smaller the amount poured, a third to a half of the bowl. One line of etiquette sits inside the procedure of a trial.

Then the pouring time. The time taken to divide tea from a kyusu or a dobin among the bowls was measured: it varies with shape, construction and size, but averages around 45 seconds, and the experiments allowed 60. Behind a condition written as thirty seconds stands twice that again.

The room was measured too: at 15°C, 20°C and 25°C, the water temperature during infusion and the liquid temperature in the bowl were taken three times each. At 15°C the better teas came out too cool to drink, and at 25°C the lower grades could come out too hot.

What was settled was four numbers — the weight of leaf, the volume of water, the temperature and the time — and behind them stood the number of people, the vessels, the room and the speed of pouring. What remains in the food composition tables and the school-lunch menu collection is those four. The figures on the back of the packet are the ones that survived.

Sources: Tea Brewing Research Group, “A Study of Tea Brewing Methods”, Tea Research Journal 40:58-66 (1973) / https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/cha1953/1973/40/1973_40_58/_article/-char/ja / verified 2026-09-22

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