Two questions people actually ask
Can green tea be brewed more than once?
Yes, and a good leaf deserves it, since the second infusion is often the better one.
Two or three short infusions work for most whole leaf green tea.
The first pour wakes the leaf, and the second is where the sweetness usually shows.
Keep each infusion short rather than extending one of them, since time is what turns it bitter.
Should the vessel be covered while it steeps?
No, and this is one of the few rules that genuinely holds across the whole category.
Trapping the heat stews the aroma and flattens the top notes the leaf is prized for.
Leave the lid off, or drop the water temperature by 5 degrees if you must cover it.
A covered cup and a boiling kettle together are how most green tea gets ruined.
Those two questions come up at every counter, and both have short answers.
Most of the rest of this category’s FAQ is about strength, which has a longer one.
Buying and storing
Green tea varies by origin and grade far more than most buyers expect it to.
So the useful question is not which is best, but how you tell a good one.
Start by smelling the dry leaf, since aroma tells you more than the price tag does.
A fresh pan fired green should smell nutty and slightly sweet, with no cardboard note.
A steamed Japanese green should smell grassy and clean, and never dusty.
Look at the leaf itself, and prefer whole intact leaf over sweepings and dust.
Grade names are set by whoever sells the tea, so treat them as a hint rather than a standard.
Ask for the picking date, since last year’s green tea is a duller drink entirely.
Storage follows the same rules as the rest of the trade, with one addition.
Keep it sealed, cool, dark and away from anything with a smell of its own.
Green tea is the most perishable category here, and a fridge helps if the seal is genuinely airtight.
Buy what you will drink in 6 months rather than a year’s supply at a discount.
Drinking it right
The biggest question about green tea is always strength, and the answer is a method rather than a number.
Tune the water and the time to the leaf instead of following a universal timer.
Start at 3 g in 150 ml with water at 80 °C and a steep of about 1 minute.
Taste it, and change only one thing before the next attempt.
If it is bitter, lower the temperature first rather than shortening the time.
A thin and dull cup wants 5 more degrees before it wants any more leaf.
Dose is the last lever, and it is the one people reach for first and should not.
A few trials with one leaf teach more than any chart of fixed rules.
Water quality matters more here than anywhere else, since there is no roast to hide behind.
Hard water flattens a delicate green tea very quickly indeed.
If your tap water is hard, a simple filter changes the cup more than a better leaf would.
That is the honest order of operations, and it works on every green tea you will meet.
Myths versus facts
Several popular claims about green tea do not hold up, and they are worth naming here.
The category is not automatically lowest in caffeine, and matcha is the obvious exception.
It does not require boiling water, and boiling water is the usual reason it tastes bad.
It is not so delicate that it cannot be rebrewed, since two or three infusions are normal.
Nor is it all the same, since a pan fired Chinese tea and a steamed Japanese one are barely related.
What is true is narrower and more useful than any of those claims.
Green tea rewards cooler water, shorter steeps and fresh leaf, and it punishes the opposite.
That single sentence covers most of what goes wrong in a domestic kitchen.
The common misconceptions page for this category goes through the rest in detail.
It is worth reading before buying an expensive tin, since the myths drive the pricing.
A seller repeating one of them is not necessarily dishonest, and is usually just repeating.
Correcting it costs one sentence, and it usually improves the very next cup.