Second steeping

Every tea reacts differently to multiple steepings. Often tea bags don’t do well with it because they have a lot of tea “dust” instead of the full leaves. Experiment and you’ll start to get a feel for it. Just increase the amount of time of the steep by like 30 seconds to a minute for each infusion. You can get a lot out of some teas!

Thanks!!

Each tea is different. Like Erin said, dust tends to give the water everything it has on it’s first go- which is why it takes less time, tea, and temperature to milk the dust for all it’s worth. Certain teas taste even better with multiple steepings… like oolong (3rd or 4th is the best steep imo). Green tea, however, taste much less robust after resteeps.

Don’t forget to adjust your time and temp accordingly during your resteeps. There’s many schools of thought on the adjustments- personally I find with oolongs that a small decrease in temp and a few seconds longer on the 3rd+ steep really keeps it going, but I would definitely say that it’s not a total science since even leaves from the same place can be different. My advice- trial and error, then write down your time and temps in your tea journal (everyone has one of these right?).

Also remember that it depends on how you steep your first cup. If you leave the first cup steeping for ages then there still won’t be much left for the second cup.