Why white tea is more forgiving than green
White tea is more forgiving than green about temperature, which is exactly why people brew it too hot and lose the sweetness without noticing.
The leaf is minimally processed. Silver Needle is an unopened bud covered in fine down, and that down carries most of the aroma along with the compounds that scorch.
The category splits in two. Young white behaves like a delicate green, and aged white behaves like a dark tea, and the two want opposite water.
Knowing which half you have matters more than any single temperature, because the gap between them is 20 degrees or more.
The rest of this is about matching the water to the half, and about the minerals in the water itself.
The good news is that white tea gives clear feedback. Once you have tasted a correctly brewed cup, a wrong one is obvious.
Temperature by white-tea style
Silver Needle wants 80 to 85. Hotter water drives off the melon and honey aromatics that are the entire reason to buy it.
White Peony, which includes open leaf as well as buds, is a little more tolerant and sits at 85 to 90.
Shou Mei and Gong Mei are made from larger, more open leaf, and they handle 90 to 95 without complaint.
Aged white, loose or pressed, wants a full boil. Anything cooler will not open a cake that has been compressed for years.
Bagged white tea, where you find it, sits at the cooler end, because the broken leaf extracts quickly.
If you cannot identify the tea, 90 degrees is a reasonable compromise. It is slightly hot for Silver Needle and slightly cool for an aged cake, and both survive it.
A thermometer is the cheapest way to settle it. Kettles marked at 90 often stop short of that, and the gap is enough to matter for Silver Needle.
Water quality and mineral content
White tea is more sensitive to water chemistry than most, because its appeal is texture and fragrance rather than strength.
Total dissolved solids between 50 and 150 parts per million is the range to aim for. Below 30 the cup tastes thin, above 200 it tastes flat.
Calcium is the specific problem. Hardness around 30 to 80 milligrams per litre as calcium carbonate gives body without dulling the aroma.
Alkalinity matters too. Water above pH 8 turns a delicate white tea soapy and darkens the liquor noticeably.
Chlorine competes directly with the floral notes, and a carbon filter removes most of it for very little money.
Temperature and minerals are separate variables, so fixing one will not rescue the other.
Aged white and boiling
Aged white is where the confusion sits, because the usual advice for white tea is the opposite of what an aged cake needs.
After about three years of storage the leaf starts to change, and after seven it behaves like a compressed dark tea in the cup.
Use a full boil, 8 grams in 200 millilitres, and steeps of two to three minutes. Rinse the cake first with five seconds of boiling water.
Or boil it outright. Five grams in 600 millilitres, simmered gently for 10 minutes, gives a thick, sweet liquor with a date-like depth.
Rinse water should be thrown away rather than drunk. It carries the surface dust and the storage smell you are removing.
Judge the tea from the fourth steep rather than the first. An aged cake almost always improves through the middle of a session.
Practical takeaway
Identify the tea first. Pale, downy, loose buds are young, and dark, compressed or stemmy leaf is aged.
Set the water from that: 85 for young, 100 for aged. That one decision does more than any other.
Use moderately mineral water around 50 to 150 parts per million, and filter out the chlorine.
Write the year on the packet when you buy. White tea crosses the line at about three years, and you cannot tell by looking later.
If a white tea tastes of hay and nothing else, check the temperature before blaming the leaf. It is the cause far more often than a poor batch.
When something is wrong, change one variable at a time. Temperature first, then dose, then steep length.