Steeped in Japan

This article may contain affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

How to Brew Sencha: The Numbers Japanese Guides Actually Use

Published 2026-07-28

You followed a guide. The tea came out bitter, or thin, or somehow both. Then you found a second guide that told you something different.

That is not your fault. English guides on sencha genuinely disagree. One says 75°C for 60 seconds. Another says 70°C for 90 seconds. Leaf-to-water ratios range from 2 grams per 100 ml to 10 grams per 210 ml. Follow two of them and you get two different drinks.

Japanese sources are far more consistent, and once you see why, the contradictions in English make sense. I live in Japan and work with the people who grow and sell Japanese tea. What follows comes from Japanese government manuals, prefectural guides, and industry bodies, most of which have never been translated.

The short answer

Here is the standard, drawn from Japanese official sources that agree with each other.

Everyday senchaPremium sencha
Leaf2 to 3 g per person2 to 3 g per person
Waterabout 90°Cabout 70°C
Volumeroughly 90 ml per personroughly 60 ml per person
Timeabout 60 secondsabout 120 seconds

Shizuoka Prefecture, JA Shizuoka City, and the Shizuoka Tea Merchants Cooperative all publish this same split. Two grades, two sets of numbers.

Second steep: ten seconds is usually enough.

That is the whole recipe. The rest of this guide explains why each number is what it is, which matters more than it sounds, because the moment you change tea or change country, you need to know what you are adjusting.

Why English guides contradict each other

Japan’s standard has an axis that English guides mostly drop: grade.

Premium sencha gets cooler water for longer. Everyday sencha gets hotter water for less time. Three separate Japanese sources publish exactly that split, and they are not copying each other. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries states the same principle in its own tea manual.

English guides tend to pick one number and present it as the number. One writer tasted a premium tea and published 70°C. Another tasted a supermarket tea and published 90°C. Both were right about their own cup. Neither said which tea they meant.

So the first question to ask is not “what temperature.” It is “which tea am I holding.”

If you do not know, start at 80°C. You will land between the two standards and taste something reasonable.

What temperature actually does

Temperature is not a comfort setting. It selects which compounds leave the leaf.

Japan’s agriculture ministry puts it plainly in its public magazine: amino acids such as theanine, which produce umami, dissolve even at temperatures above 50°C. Catechins and caffeine, which produce astringency and bitterness, come out at 80°C and above. The ministry’s conclusion follows directly. Brew below 80°C when you want umami.

JA Shizuoka City describes the same effect from the other direction. Above 80°C, bitter and astringent compounds extract heavily. Below 60°C, they extract slowly.

This is why premium sencha gets cool water. A high grade leaf carries more theanine, and that is what you paid for. Boiling water pulls the catechins forward and buries it.

It also explains the time difference. Cooler water extracts more slowly, so premium sencha needs two minutes to give up what it has. Hot water works fast, so everyday sencha needs one.

The water rule nobody translates

This is the part that catches people outside Japan, and it has an official number attached.

Japan’s agriculture ministry specifies water hardness in its tea brewing manual:

Water suited to Japanese tea is soft water with a hardness of 100 mg/L or less, ideally around 30 to 80 mg/L. When hardness is high, the liquor colour becomes thin (paler, closer to colourless), fresh aroma declines, and the taste can carry off-notes.

Japanese tap water sits at roughly 20 to 80 by the World Green Tea Association’s account. Much European tap water runs 200 to 400. If you are brewing in London, Paris, Munich, or large parts of the American Southwest, you are likely outside the range the entire Japanese method assumes.

The symptom is specific, and worth memorising: not bitterness, but flatness. Pale liquor, muted aroma, a cup that tastes of less than it should. If your sencha keeps arriving weak no matter how much leaf you add, suspect your water before you blame the tea.

One honest caveat. Japanese sources do not fully agree on what hard water does. Ito En describes it much as the ministry does, with flattened taste and a cloudy liquor. The World Green Tea Association notes that some European mineral water around hardness 300 can soften astringency into something rounder. A Shizuoka teaching resource says the opposite, that hard water pushes astringency up. The ministry’s line is the most authoritative available, so that is what this guide follows, but the disagreement is real and I would rather show it than flatten it.

The practical fix is dull and effective. Use filtered or bottled soft water and check the label. Volvic sits near 60. Evian is near 300.

If you use tap water, boil it with the lid off for two to five minutes. Japanese guides are unanimous that chlorine destroys the aroma, though they differ on the timing: the Shizuoka Tea Merchants Cooperative says simply to boil it, one retailer says two to three minutes, another says five or more.

The four moves Japanese guides assume you know

Every Japanese guide skips these, the way a bread recipe skips how to hold a bowl.

Cool the water by pouring it. Nobody uses a thermometer. Boiled water goes into a cooling vessel, or into the teacups themselves, and drops about 5 to 10°C each time it changes container, according to Fujieda City’s official guide. Two transfers from boiling put you near 80°C. Pouring into the cups first warms them, which is the second reason to do it.

Pour in rounds, not in cups. Filling one cup and then the next gives the first person weak tea and the last person strong tea. The Japanese method fills all cups in stages. Satoen documents the sequence precisely: pour about a third into each cup going A to B to C, then about half the remainder coming back C to B to A, then the last drops forward again.

Empty the pot completely. The final drop carries the most concentrated flavour, and Japanese sellers call it the golden drop. The Kagoshima Prefecture Tea Producers Association uses the same term. This is not sentiment. Water left in the pot keeps extracting, and your second steep turns harsh. The Japan Tea Instructor Association names this as the single point that decides whether the second cup is good.

Loosen the lid between steeps. Fujieda City recommends shifting the lid aside after pouring so the leaves do not stew in trapped heat. Tapping the side of the pot to level the leaves makes the second steep pour evenly.

The second and third steeps

Sencha is not a one-pour tea. Three steeps is normal, and the leaf has already opened, so everything speeds up.

Second steep: slightly hotter water, about ten seconds. Shizuoka Prefecture frames it as roughly a third of the first steep’s time.

Third steep: hotter still, and shorter again. Japanese sources thin out here, and I have not found an official number I trust enough to print. Treat the third as improvisation.

Equipment, and what to do without it

The standard vessel is a yokode kyusu, a side-handled pot. The handle sits at ninety degrees to the spout, which lets you hold the lid with one finger and pour in rounds with a flick of the wrist. It is built for the pouring method above.

You do not need one to start. Any small pot with a fine strainer works. What matters is that you can empty it completely and quickly.

You do not need a cooling vessel either. Fujieda City’s own guide uses ordinary teacups for the job.

For measuring, a teaspoon of sencha runs roughly 2 to 2.3 grams across Japanese sources, so one level teaspoon per person is close enough. A kitchen scale is better, because leaf density varies with the style of tea.

One note if you are coming from my article on fukamushi sencha: deep-steamed leaf is much finer and clogs coarse strainers. Regular sencha does not have that problem, and a standard mesh handles it.

Five ways to ruin it

Cold brew

Sencha takes well to cold water, and the chemistry from earlier explains why. Cold water leaves catechins and caffeine largely in the leaf, and what you get is the sweet, savoury side with almost no edge.

Shizuoka Prefecture’s guide uses a 5 g teabag in 0.5 litres of water for 10 to 15 minutes. Loose leaf takes longer, and published times run from two hours at room temperature to three to six hours refrigerated, depending on leaf and ratio. Japanese sources recommend increasing the leaf by roughly half compared with a hot brew, since cold water extracts less.

Refrigerate it once it is done. Colour and flavour degrade at room temperature.

What sencha is, in one paragraph

Sencha is not a specialty tea in Japan. It is the default. Sencha accounts for 49.7 percent of Japan’s crude tea production, against 1.0 percent for gyokuro, by the agriculture ministry’s own figures.

The other types differ mostly in what happens before or during processing. Gyokuro is shaded before harvest, which raises theanine and calls for water as cool as 50 to 60°C. Fukamushi sencha is steamed two to three times longer, which breaks the leaf finer and shortens the steep. Hojicha is roasted, and roasted teas want near-boiling water because you are chasing aroma rather than umami.

Sencha sits in the middle of all of it. That is what makes it the tea worth learning to brew properly first.

Start here

Weigh out three grams. Boil the water and pour it into your cup, then into the pot, so it lands somewhere near 80°C. Wait a minute. Pour in rounds, and take the pot down to the last drop.

Then taste it and adjust one thing. If it is harsh, drop the temperature. If it is thin and pale, look hard at your water.

Sources

Japanese government and prefectural sources:

Industry bodies and producers: