When you’re making your tea with prepackaged tea bags, you might wonder how many of them you need to use to make the perfect cup of tea. The answer depends on personal preference, but the general rule is to use one tea bag for every cup (6 ounces) of water.
In this article you'll find:
Adjusting for Strength Preferences
If you want a stronger tea, then you’ll want to use more tea bags.
A lot of people mistakenly think that they can just get a stronger tea by simply steeping the tea for more time than recommended, and while this is technically true, it’s not ideal.
Steeping tea for too long often gives the tea a bitter taste, instead of the flavor the tea is supposed to have. So to ensure that you get the best possible flavor, add more tea bags and steep for the same amount of time rather than using just one tea bag and steeping it for longer.
If you want weaker tea, you could break the tea bag open, remove some tea leaves and still steep it for the recommended amount of time – of course you’ll need to use a strainer before you drink the tea. This way you’ll get the intended flavor, it’ll just be a bit weaker.
If you steep it for less time, you will get a weaker tea, that’s true, but you won’t have all of the flavors the tea would have had. Some ingredients in the tea might take longer to develop, so if you pull the tea bag out too soon, you’ll miss out on those flavors.
Other Considerations
The rule of one tea bag for every 6 ounces applies to when you’re making tea the traditional way, with hot water, and you intend to drink it hot.
If you’re making iced tea, though, either by steeping tea bags in cold water or by making hot tea and then refrigerating it, you’ll generally want to use at least twice as many bags as you would for a regular cup.
This is because flavors are less intense in cold beverages (and food by the way). So two tea bags will mean you get to taste the flavor of the tea in a similar strength as you would have if it was hot.
So, the general rule to start with is one tea bag per cup for hot tea, and two per cup for iced tea. Happy tea-making!
