A standard teaspoon?

The amount of tea you are supposed to use for brewing is usually measured by teaspoon (if they don't come pre-measured in tea bags). My loose leaf teas say to use one teaspoon of leaves for 6 oz of water. Since I normally brew in 18 oz incraments, I use a tablespoon of tea (3 teaspoons). The reality is that the shape and size of the tea leaves really change how much tea will fit in a tablespoon. In fact the shape of the tablespoon makes a difference how much tea will fit in it. The way to get around that is to buy a tea scale. Yes, I bought more tea parafanalia, but in the name of science, and good tea brewing, and... yeah, I have an obsession with good tea. I decided to try an experiment. I have an oblong tablespoon, and a round tablespoon. I decided to see what the difference was scooping a large, elongated tea leaf versus smaller, more compact leaves. There were several surprises. I started out with my snow dragon tea. This is a pan fired Chinese tea. The leaves are processed to be long, thin, and flat.

The oblong tablespoon was kind of heaped up, and measured 3.00 grams of tea.

The round tablespoon scooped up significantly less tea at 2.20 grams. Both of these measures fall short of the recommended 4-6 grams of tea for use with 18 oz of water. I always add way more tea than I think I need when brewing snow dragon because it is really weak otherwise. I next checked my tablespoon shapes on my ginger puerh tea. This is also a Chinese tea, but the leaves are more compact.

The oblong tablespoon scooped 4.65 grams to be within the measurement range given for 2 cups of water.

The round tablespoon scooped 5.10 grams. That's still a difference of almost half a gram! Admittidly, I did not try swiping a straight edge over the top of the tablespoon because the leaves are large enough that I think a significant amount of tea would be knocked off by this method causing the measurement to be too low. I was curious about how this would play out with my ryokucha tea. This is a pan fired Japanese tea. The leaves are processed to be very uniform and compact, and I can tell that the tablespoon is heavier than normal when I scoop it. I try using a scant tablespoon, but sometimes the tea seems a bit weak. Now I have a way of knowing for sure how much tea I'm using. I started by weighing a full table spoon.

7.15 grams is toward the upper limit of tea used to brew in 2 cups of water. I tried brewing with 5 grams of this tea. I still get the beautiful yellow color, and the bright, grassy flavor. Even better, I saved a couple of grams of tea so I can make more pots of one of my favorite teas!