Food & Beverage
Building a brewing chart for five tea types
A brewing temperature chart is the most useful first page a tea guide can publish. This guide explains how to choose the tea types, set the ranges and present them so readers can act at the kettle.
01
Choose five types and anchor each to a leaf
Start with white, green, oolong, black and herbal. Herbal blends are technically infusions, but readers expect them in a tea chart, so include them with a note. For each type, name one familiar example, such as a jasmine green or an everyday breakfast black, so the row connects to a box someone owns. Keep the list to five so the chart fits on a phone screen. Resist adding pu-erh, matcha and others on the first version; those can become separate pages once the core chart proves useful and readers ask for more.
02
Set ranges, not single numbers
Give each type a temperature range and a steeping time range rather than one fixed figure. As a worked example, a green tea row might read: water just off the boil but cooled a few minutes, steep a short time, and shorten it if the cup turns bitter. Black tea tolerates hotter water and longer steeping; delicate white tea prefers gentler heat. Always check the packaging first, because producers differ. State that your ranges are starting points for tasting, and invite readers to adjust by small steps, one variable at a time, until the cup suits them.
03
Add a no-thermometer method and a review step
Many readers have no thermometer, so add a simple kettle method: after boiling, let the water rest for a stated number of minutes for cooler teas. Place this beside each row. Then build a review step into publishing: brew every row yourself, record notes, and ask a second person to follow the chart and report confusion. Revise wording where they hesitated. Finally, add a date and a short line explaining what changed, so readers trust that the chart is maintained and not simply copied from elsewhere.