Do you brew the tea inside the samavar itself?

No. You brew a small amount of strong tea in the small pot (the ghoori) that sits on the crown, keep it hot with the steam rising from below, and then dilute it to taste in each glass using hot water from the samavar tap.

How long should the tea steep on top of the samavar?

Give the ghoori a good ten to fifteen minutes to make a proper concentrate. Because the steam keeps it warm rather than boiling it, it stays hot without stewing, though for the freshest flavour it is best to make a new pot every few hours.

Is a charcoal or electric samavar better for a beginner?

Electric is the easier place to start. It holds a steady boil indoors at the flick of a switch, so you can focus on the tea. Charcoal rewards patience and ventilation and is lovely for a slow gathering.

Can I use tea bags in a samavar?

You can, but the samavar was made for whole loose leaf. Large leaf brewed in the ghoori gives you a richer concentrate and the freedom to pour each glass exactly as strong as you like.

August 22, 2026

How to Use a Samavar

There is a sound a Persian home makes when it is properly awake, and it is not an alarm. It is the low, patient murmur of a samavar finding its boil, a sound that quietly announces the day may begin whenever you like, but tea comes first. If you have just inherited one of these gleaming urns, or finally bought the one you have admired for years, you may be regarding it now with equal parts reverence and unease. Good. The reverence is correct. The unease we can sort out.

What a samavar actually does

Strip away the brass and the filigree and a samavar is disarmingly simple: a tall vessel that keeps a reserve of water at the boil, with a small teapot, the ghoori, perched on the crown at the top. Here is the part that surprises newcomers. You do not brew your tea inside the samavar itself. You brew a small quantity of very strong tea in the ghoori, kept hot by the steam rising beneath it, and then you cut it to strength glass by glass with fresh hot water from the tap below.

One brew, many glasses, each poured exactly as bold or as gentle as its drinker prefers. That is the whole quiet genius of the thing. Once you see the samavar as a hot-water reservoir with a concentrate pot on top, rather than one giant teapot, everything else falls into place.

Charcoal or electric?

The old samavars burn charcoal in a central flue, and there is little on earth like tea drawn from one: a faint thread of woodsmoke, the theatre of glowing coals, a slight unpredictability that makes every pot feel earned. It also asks something of you, namely ventilation, patience, and somewhere sensible to tend live embers. It is a weekend companion, not a Tuesday one.

Electric samavars trade the romance for a switch. They hold a steady boil indefinitely, they live indoors without a second thought, and they let you attend to the tea rather than the fire. For everyday life, electric wins comfortably. For a slow winter evening when the ritual is half the point, charcoal earns its keep. Neither is wrong. They are simply different moods, and you are allowed both.

Brewing, step by step

Fill the samavar with fresh, cold water and bring it to a full boil. Fresh water matters more than most people expect; flat, many-times-reboiled water makes flat, tired tea.
Warm the empty ghoori with a splash of hot water, swirl it, and tip it out. A cold pot robs the leaf of its opening heat.
Spoon in your whole-leaf tea, roughly one generous teaspoon for each glass you mean to serve, plus one more for the pot itself. The large, unbroken leaf of our Black Gold Earl Grey wants room to open, so give the ghoori a little space to work.
Fill the pot with boiling water, seat it back on the crown, and let it dam, that is, steep, for a good ten to fifteen minutes. The steam below keeps it hot without ever stewing it over a naked flame.
To serve, pour a measure of the dark concentrate into each glass, then lengthen it with fresh hot water from the tap until the colour looks right.

Read the colour, not the clock

Persians rarely fuss over a timer once the concentrate is made. They read the tea by its rang, its colour. A glass poured deep and brooding is porrang, strong; one poured pale and golden is kamrang, light. The beauty of the samavar is that both come from the same pot, since you simply adjust the ratio of concentrate to water in the glass. Serve your elders their porrang, give the children a whisper of kamrang, and everyone is happy from a single dam. A note in passing: black tea carries a fair amount of caffeine, and a porrang glass will generally carry more of it than a pale one, which is worth remembering after dark.

Serve it like you mean it

Tradition pours the tea into a small, waisted glass called an estekan. The pinched kamar-barik shape is not merely pretty; it lets you cradle the glass by its cooler rim while the tea stays hot below. Set it on a saucer, offer a cube of ghand alongside, and resist the urge to drown the glass in milk. This is tea meant to be seen as much as tasted, so hold it to the light before the first sip and you will understand why the colour matters so much. Then let the samavar do what it was built to do: keep the second glass, and the third, waiting patiently for you.