Brewed gongfu style — a generous measure of leaf, a small pot, short steeps — a good oolong, Wuyi rock tea or pu'er will give you between six and ten infusions, and the best four or five arrive early. Brewed the Western way, a teaspoon in a large mug, those same leaves give you two.
That gap is the whole answer. Infusion count is not a property of the tea you bought but arithmetic: how much leaf against how much water, how hot it is, and how long each steep sits before you pour.
What actually sets the number
Ratio comes first: five grams in a 110ml pot has far more to give than two grams in a 300ml mug, so it survives more pours. Temperature governs not merely how fast the leaf releases its solubles but how much it surrenders altogether. And contact time is cumulative: ten steeps of fifteen seconds take a toll much like one steep of two and a half minutes, only divided into more cups.
The shape of the leaf matters just as much. A tightly rolled Tie Guan Yin, a heavily roasted rock tea, a pressed pu'er cake — all release slowly, because water has to work its way in. A tender, bud-picked green tea gives up everything at once and is finished by the third pour. So nai pao, the durability the trade prizes, tracks leaf maturity, rolling and compression. It is not a grade: some of our finest teas are the least durable.
Our Ba Nuo ripe pu'er shows it plainly: leaf near the centre of the disc is barely wet until the fourth pour.
Where the flavour peaks, and where it falls away
A 2025 study in the journal Foods took a single Yunnan raw pu'er, brewed it fourteen times in succession at 100°C, and put every infusion before a nine-person trained panel. Overall scores stayed above 80 as far as the eleventh brew. The taste scores only climbed past 90 between the third and the seventh.
The chemistry explains that. Amino acids — behind sweetness and thick, savoury body — leached fastest, peaking at the second brew, while polyphenols kept coming out steadily through all fourteen. The leaf produces coloured, astringent liquor long after it stops producing anything sweet, so late steeps taste less weak than hollow. One caution: that was a single tea, under a year old, and the authors say it may not speak for pu'er of other ages.
So where does “seven infusions” come from?
Not from where most people assume. The boast attached to Tie Guan Yin — seven infusions and the fragrance still lingers — reads as a grading claim, and we could not trace it to any source old enough to call it ancient. The method is younger than its reputation too: the name gongfu cha is first attached to this way of brewing in a text of 1801, which legitimises itself by claiming descent from Lu Yu's eighth-century Classic of Tea — a book describing powdered tea boiled in a cauldron, with no resteeping in it at all.
More interesting is the one early text that actually counts. Xu Cishu's Chashu of 1597 says a pot bears only two rounds — the first fresh, the second mellow, the third spent — and concludes the pot should therefore be small, small enough that two good rounds finish it with some fragrance left unspent in the leaf. The small pot was advice about stopping in time; the modern claim that it lets you press on for a dozen steeps inverts him.
We have poured this way on Neil Road since 1989, and our answer across the counter hasn't changed: stop counting, and taste it.
Does the rinse count — and does it wash out the caffeine?
The quick pour-off at the start warms the vessel and loosens rolled or compressed leaf so the next pour extracts evenly. It is not an infusion, and we don't count it.
It also will not decaffeinate your tea. The precise-sounding percentage usually quoted in support of that idea traces back to nobody actually measuring a rinse. What has been measured is different: across three successive five-minute brews of eight teas, Hicks and colleagues found caffeine emerged at roughly 69%, 23% and 8% (1996). Most does leave early, in a long first brew. But a five-second rinse is not a five-minute brew, and what it removes has never been published. If caffeine concerns you, drink fewer steeps or choose a gentler tea. Nor is the rinse a cleaning step, whatever you may have read.
Getting more out of the leaves in front of you
Use more leaf rather than more time; nothing else lengthens a session so reliably. Keep the water genuinely hot for roasted oolong and pu'er, then stretch the later infusions: fifteen seconds early on, thirty in the middle, a minute after that, then as long as it takes.
And decant completely, every time. Leaf standing in water goes on extracting between pours — the usual reason a promising session turns bitter by the fifth cup. A gaiwan makes that easy, and pouring through a justice cup evens the strength so everyone gets the same tea.
Knowing when to stop matters more than knowing how far you could go. Watch the aftertaste, not the colour: when the liquor still looks respectable but leaves nothing in the mouth, you are done. Good rock tea declares itself there, holding a mineral finish while cheaper leaf collapses into something flat and ashy. For ratios and timings, see our guide to brewing Chinese tea gongfu style.
Frequently asked questions
How many times can you resteep oolong tea?
Gongfu style, six to ten infusions from a rolled or roasted oolong, the best cups between the third and the seventh. In a mug, two is realistic. The leaf hasn't changed; the ratio has.
Does rinsing tea remove the caffeine?
No. The percentages repeated online don't trace back to any study that measured a rinse. Caffeine emerges mostly in the early minutes of steeping, but a few seconds of hot water is not a first brew.
Can I reuse tea leaves the next day?
Flavour fails first: leaves left out overnight give a flat, faintly sour cup. Warm damp leaves also suit microbes, so if you must carry a session over, refrigerate the leaf rather than leaving the pot standing.
Does a tea that gives more infusions mean better quality?
Not on its own. Durability follows leaf maturity, rolling and compression, so a coarse, tightly rolled tea can outlast a finer bud-picked one. Quality shows in the late steeps, not the count.