Caffeine content in pu erh teas?
Posted: Jun 20th, '11, 23:46
Is it true that most of the Caffeine is gone from pu erh teas after first rinse when we clean the tea and make leaves open, thus making puerh a low Caffeine drink?
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While I don't think a quick rinse will reduce the caffeine content I do wonder if a seriously long first steeping, western style, then thrown away will reduce the caffeine content in the second steeping. In theory, 3g of Puerh tea only has a certain amount of caffeine. If you extract most of it in a first steeping, less is available for the second steeping. However, you are also throwing away that tastiest first steeping.dagestan1980 wrote:Is it true that most of the Caffeine is gone from pu erh teas after first rinse when we clean the tea and make leaves open, thus making puerh a low Caffeine drink?
So basically, if your first steep is long enough to significantly reduce the caffeine content of a resteep, then you've probably lost a majority of your flavor. I have heard things saying that roasting lowers caffeine level, but I've seen no evidence of this (I would love to see evidence if anyone knows of any).entropyembrace wrote:This is absolutely untrue. I have posted on this forum in the past peer reviewed scientific studies on tea extractions which demonstrated that it can take 15 minutes or more to extract all of the caffeine from tea.Marcella wrote:I generally rinse all my teas for about... perhaps 15 seconds? (I count [mutter] to 30 for about 2-3 long breaths).
The people I get my tea from (a local vendor), says that even if the tea is clean, the first brew typically contains all the caffeine, afterwards, the following brews contain no caffeine (and if there is any, I assume the amount is negligable).
http://www2.hcmuaf.edu.vn/data/lhquang/ ... nthine.pdf
theres also http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.login.ez ... 5/abstract but you need access to read it
and I originally found those papers through a summary on Cha Dao http://chadao.blogspot.ca/2008/02/caffe ... ality.html
the 15 minutes thing I've said often came from Nigel's maths based on the results of those two papers.