Brewing Time
The Perfect Brew
How long should tea be brewed?
Brewing time is the length of time the tea bag or tea leaves are left to steep in hot water before it has a detrimental impact on taste. The length of time up to this point can vary according to personal taste. Some people love a very strong brew, while others like to whip their tea out almost immediately after the water has been poured. The size of leaves used also has a bearing on required brewing time. Smaller tea particles tend to release their flavour quickly while whole leaves take longer to do the same as they need time to unfurl.
As a guide, most Twist whole leaf blends take 3-5 minutes of brewing to release their flavour. The exception to this rule is our Great Taste Award winning TwentyFourSeven, a blend of organic Indian Assam and Kenyan black teas carefully cut to produce a strong and delicious tea in just two minutes. This is the perfect strong English breakfast blend for those in a hurry!
Rooibos and fruit and herbal blends can happily stay in the water as long as they like. These blends are not from the camellia sinesis plant and therefore do not contain tannins, compounds found in tea that can cause bitterness if too many are released during brewing.
As a rule of thumb it is best to remove the tea from the water after 5 minutes to avoid over brewing. If serving tea bags, we suggest leaving the tea bag in to allow the customer the choice of when to remove the tea.
