--- title: 'Glass and grandpa style' url: 'https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/grandpa-style' markdown: 'https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/grandpa-style.md' lang: en date: '2026-10-25' description: 'Brewing in a glass, bowl or big mug with the leaf left in: three loading orders, the 1:50 ratio, topping up at one third and the teas that suit it.' --- # Glass and grandpa style 杯泡法 Editors · October 25, 2026 · 9 min read The most ordinary way to drink tea in China: the leaf stays in a glass or mug and you keep adding water until the flavor is gone. Little leaf, water below boiling, no hurry. ![Green tea brewed in a glass with the leaves in the water](https://howtotea.me/images/c/o/v/e/r/cover-dd042d07.webp) Illustration 杯泡法 Glass and grandpa bēi pào fǎ Idea: the leaf stays in the water while you drink Ratio: 1:50 (3 g per 150 ml) Top-up: when a third of the liquor is left Vessel: glass, bowl, mug, jar, thermos Chinese name: 杯泡法 (glass), 碗泡法 (bowl) Fills: up to three for green tea **80°**, water **3 g**, per 150 ml **up to 3**, fills In China most tea is drunk the simple way: leaf into a clear glass, water on top, back to work. In Chinese this is 杯泡法, "glass brewing". It has two close relatives, the bowl (碗泡法) and the big mug or jar that gets refilled all day. In all three the leaf stays in the water and you drink straight from the vessel. In English, that last one is known as grandpa style. The Taiwanese tea teacher Cai Rongzhang lists it among his ten brewing methods as 含叶茶法, the "nonstrained tea method". The tea is kept at a strength that still tastes good once the leaf has nothing left to give. ## Glass and the three loading orders In a glass you can watch the leaf open and sink and see the color of the liquor right away, which is why the China National Tea Museum in Hangzhou recommends a glass for green, yellow and white teas and for tied flower teas. [Glass teaware](https://howtotea.me/teaware/materials/glass) as a material has its own page; here the focus is procedure. It comes down to what goes into the glass first, and Chinese tea practice has three orders: - **top loading** (上投, shang tou): pour the water, let it cool, then add the leaf; - **middle loading** (中投, zhong tou): a third of the water, the leaf, a swirl, then top up; - **bottom loading** (下投, xia tou): the leaf, a little water, a swirl, then top up. All three appear in Zhang Yuan's *Record of Tea* (茶录), in the section on loading the tea: leaf first and water second is the lower order; half the water, leaf, then the rest is the middle; water first and leaf second is the upper. He recommends the middle order in spring and autumn, the upper in summer and the lower in winter.[1](#fn:1) Modern guides tie the order to the leaf, not the season, and the logic is simple. A heavy, tightly rolled leaf dropped onto water sinks by itself. A loose, light leaf floats, so it needs bottom loading. | Order | Leaf it suits | Examples | |---|---|---| | top | dense, tight, downy buds | [Bi Luo Chun](https://howtotea.me/teas/green/bi-luo-chun), Xinyang Maojian | | middle | flat and tight leaf | [Longjing](https://howtotea.me/teas/green/longjing), Lu'an Gua Pian | | bottom | large, loose leaf | Taiping Houkui, [Huangshan Mao Feng](https://howtotea.me/teas/green/huangshan-mao-feng), Anji Baicha | Even here, sources disagree. Some guides put Longjing in middle loading, others in bottom loading, and the Tea Museum shows it with bottom loading and a short soak. A wrong choice costs little: you notice it in the first sip, and the tea is not ruined. With top loading the liquor settles in layers of different strength, so swirl the glass before the first sip. ## Green tea in a glass, step by step This is how the Tea Museum brews Longjing: 1. Warm the glass with boiling water and pour it out. 2. Put in 3 g of tea for 150 ml of water, a ratio of 1:50. 3. Pour in a little water at about 80°C, just enough to cover the leaf. This is the "wetting infusion", 浸润泡. 4. Swirl the glass so the leaf soaks up the water. In Chinese this is "shaking out the aroma", 摇香. 5. Add the rest of the water from a height in three pours, a move called "the phoenix nods three times", 凤凰三点头. 6. Drink while hot. When a third is left in the glass, top up. By the third fill the flavor usually thins out. A 150 ml glass Leaf 3 g, water about 80°C (176°F). A little water on the leaf first, swirl, then top up from a height. Drink after a couple of minutes and refill when a third is left. Three fills. The leaf stays in the glass, so "steep time" in Chinese texts means something else: when to start drinking, not when to pour off. Usually that is 2–3 minutes. Temperature depends on the tea. Delicate buds like Bi Luo Chun want 75–85°C, ordinary named greens 80–85°C, [yellow tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/yellow) 85–90°C. Boiling water scalds the bud: as a CCTV broadcast explained, the liquor turns yellow, cloudy and bitter. When the leaf is low in [polyphenols](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/polyphenols), as with Anji Baicha, the first fill goes even cooler, at 60–65°C. ## The bowl The bowl (碗泡法) is simpler than the glass. Use a wide, open vessel, ideally V-shaped and on a foot so you can hold it while hot. Pour the water, wait, then drink from the bowl or ladle the tea into cups with a spoon. It is also the easiest to wash: tip out the leaf and rinse. Warm the bowl, spoon and cups with boiling water. Add the leaf: young raw [pu-erh](https://howtotea.me/teas/dark/puer) takes one large leaf and one bud, [black tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/black) five to seven leaves. Pour along the far wall, swirling the stream slightly downward, so the leaf goes under the water instead of floating. Wait a minute or two. Each time, leave a little liquor behind, the "root" (留根), and pour fresh water on top. A bowl takes hotter water than a glass. A Fujian newspaper advises at least 90°C, because an open bowl cools fast. Some teas release flavor faster than others: [dark tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/dark) is quickest, then black tea and [oolong](https://howtotea.me/teas/oolong), while yellow, green and white are slowest. Long, strip-shaped leaf behaves best, since it floats less and does not stick to your lips. Treat the claim that the bowl is "the oldest method" with caution. Pinch-steeping in a bowl (撮泡) was known in the Ming. The Song painting by Liu Songnian that people sometimes cite shows a big bowl and a spoon used to whisk powdered tea, not to brew leaf. ## Grandpa style MarshalN, the author of the blog A Tea Addict's Journal, coined the term a few years before 2011, naming it after his grandfather, who drank tea this way. By his account, most Chinese people drink tea like this most of the time, and few know how to brew gongfu. One tea house tells of a Beijing taxi driver with a jar, leaf resting at the bottom. The rules are few, and the main one is not to overload. Anyone used to [gongfu cha](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/gongfu-cha) reaches for three times too much leaf out of habit, and the result is harsh. - Little leaf, lots of hot water. - Leave the lid off for the first fill; close it from the second or third to hold the heat. - Do not drink below half; keeping two thirds is better. Mei Leaf tops up once two thirds are gone, so the last third "seeds" the next fill. - Pour sharply and down the wall, to mix old liquor with new water. - Blow floating leaves to the far edge. MarshalN praises the method for aged and roasted oolongs and ripe pu-erh: it brings out shades of flavor that gongfu misses. Mei Leaf likes light-tasting, large-leaf teas that release flavor slowly, and names Houkui as its favorite. Japanese green teas and broken CTC leaf do not work: fine particles end up in your mouth and the tea turns bitter fast. ## Thermos and strainer mug A thermos is a different thing altogether, closer to stewing than brewing. According to *Pu'er* magazine, you rinse the leaf with boiling water, fill to the top with boiling water, close the lid for 30–40 minutes, then drink and top up at half. The ratio is 1:300: 1–1.5 g per 450 ml, or 3 g per liter. It suits teas that hold up to long steeping: ripe pu-erh, aged [white tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/white), and raw pu-erh older than about five years. Delicate [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green) does not belong in a thermos. In an experiment at Anhui Agricultural University, Huangshan Mao Feng was brewed for up to three hours in a glass and in a vacuum mug. Tea from the glass smelled "clean", "fresh" and "grassy"; tea from the mug smelled "stewed". Liquor in the mug turned yellow and grew more bitter and astringent.[2](#fn:2) But "poison from the thermos" is a myth: under China's GB 9684-2011 standard, metal release from food-grade steel is negligible. What suffers is flavor, not safety. Look for food-grade stainless steel, most often grade 304. A mug with a [strainer](https://howtotea.me/teaware/utensils/strainers) (茶水分离杯) solves another problem: a button separates the leaf from the liquor, so overbrewing is harder. ## Which vessel for which tea Green tea suits a glass, young raw pu-erh a bowl, and aged oolong and ripe pu-erh a mug. The clear glass tells you more than any clock: the color of the liquor shows when to top up. Big teapots and tea bags belong to [Western brewing](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/western), and choosing [water for tea](https://howtotea.me/brewing/basics/water) is a subject of its own. ## Common questions Does the tea turn bitter if the leaf sits in the water the whole time? It does when there is too much leaf or the water is too hot. Taiwan's tea research station warns about bitterness and astringency from long contact. That is why the method comes with two rules: 3 g per 150 ml, and topping up on time so the liquor never overstays. What water temperature works for green tea in a glass? About 80°C for Longjing and 75–85°C for most others. Boiling water scalds the bud: the liquor turns yellow, cloudy and bitter. Roasted oolongs and ripe pu-erh in a big mug take hotter water. Can I leave tea in a thermos overnight? No, and the reason is flavor. The worry about metals from food-grade steel is overblown, but green tea in a vacuum mug loses freshness within three hours and smells stewed. A thermos suits ripe pu-erh and aged white tea. Notes 1. Zhang Yuan, *Record of Tea* (张源, 茶录), section 投茶, text at [ctext.org](https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?chapter=433489&if=gb). The dating of the book is disputed: the commentary of a scholarly edition gives about 1595, while Ding Yishou argued in 2004 for a date before 1509. Neither source disputes the three loading orders. [↩](#fnref1:1) 2. Dai Q. et al., "The impacts of brewing in glass tumblers and thermos vacuum mugs on the aromas of green tea", J Food Sci Technol 56(10), 2019: [PMC6801281](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6801281/). The color, bitterness and astringency data come from a separate publication on the same experiment in *Food and Life* (食品与生活), 2022. [↩](#fnref1:2) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Brewing methods](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods.md) - Previous: [Western brewing: teapot, tea bag, infuser](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/western.md) - Next: [Cold brew and iced tea](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/cold-brew.md)