TeaChat

Despite the look of the web page it is on, this article is SHORT and based on research.

According to the article, all types of tea, black, green or white have the same caffeine content. Assam and White ( made only from the buds......."silver needle tea" ) had the highest content overall.

Beyond that, growing and processing -- aside from oxidation -- dictate caffeine levels.

Also, it was found to be a myth that you can lose 80% of the caffeine by steeping it for 30 seconds. The reality is closer to 6 minutes.

http://elmwoodinn.com/about/caffeine.html

I'm curious to know what the dry weight of the tea used was. I'm surprised this wasn't given.

Admins, please delete this post.

The researchers used 2.5 grams of dry leaf per 6 ounces of water.

This leads me to ask...

Why would seed propagated plants produce possibly twice as much vs clonals? Are other compounds found in tea plants to similar ratios?

Is this the same source as that discussed on a chadao.blogspot.com article a few years ago? The conclusions sound similar.

teaisme wrote:This leads me to ask...

Why would seed propagated plants produce possibly twice as much vs clonals? Are other compounds found in tea plants to similar ratios?

Theoretically seed bearing plants or plants "intending" to reproduce tend to produce more defensive chemicals. So it sounds reasonable that they will produce more caffeine, which is a type of defensive chemical against bugs.

Also, since caffeine tends to add bitterness to tea and clonals are likely selected for favorable ... less bitter and more "sweet" qualities, perhaps the clonals by way of favorable genetics produce less caffeine

Pure speculation albeit

I do know many cloned plants, including tea, produce very shallow roots (which necessitates fertilizer to sustain production). It's possible that this arrangement causes a reaction in which caffeine production is down-regulated.

M.

Some of the presentation of this study confused me when I looked at it several years ago, so I emailed Bruce Richardson and Bruce Branan. Dr. Branan's reply is helpful:

"The primary reason we represented the results the way we did was due to the problem we were studying. “Is it possible to remove 80% of the caffeine of a cup of tea by throwing out the first 30 second infusion?” Thus we were interested in how much caffeine was in the second cup of tea compared to the caffeine amount in the first cup of tea, not the total amount of caffeine available in the tea leaves themselves. (We did, however, check a fourth infusion, and the caffeine level essentially fell off to nothing, so you are correct that by adding the caffeine in 3 infusions pretty much gets all of it)."

Note that a 7 oz cup was used, and they don't say how much tea was used. In an email Dr. Branan also noted that the temperatures were not consistent across tea varieties. ("It depended on the tea, but all were above 85 degrees when the infusion began, and each infusion between 70-75 degrees after the 3 minute infusion.") Again, the study just sets out to debunk the "30 second caffeine removal wash" theory by using various "naturalistic" brewing scenarios. I think the study design severely limits its general usefulness, but it was basically Bruce Richardson's pet project, and not published in a journal....

I contacted them as well. See earlier post for amount of dry leaf.