TeaChat

Does white tea contain any caffeine?

I've heard two things.
One, that caffeine is very low in white tea, and according to ceratin tea suppliers this is the case...
however...
as i read liquid jade, the author made an interesting point...
the white little "hairs" on what tea leaves are what contain teas caffeine and white tea has a lot of these little hairs, more so than the other more "processed" teas. So should this imply that white tea has more caffeine that other teas?

But all in all..i have no idea.

You know, I did read somewhere that white tea does contain the most caffeine in it's dry state and that young buds contain more caffeine than more mature ones...so maybe there's something to that.

However, it does seem that processing plays more of a role in determining how much caffeine makes it into the liquor than base content does. Whites have the lowest caffeine concentration in brew-form followed (unsurprisingly) by greens, oolongs and blacks. Interestingly, roasting a tea seems to decrease it's brew-caffeine too.

Still, until I see a proper study on the matter (I want pie charts and bar graphs and journal publication dangit!) I will remain healthily skeptical on the matter.

The other day, I had four cups of bai hao yin zhen, using the same tbsp of leaves, and I was buzzing. And I can drink 4 cups of coffee and 2 Dr. Peppers at work and be fun.

So either white tea effects me different than black tea, or it does have more caffiene.

In my opinion it dosent make any sence for there to be no caffiene in white tea. its the same plant and i think if anything there would be more caffine in white tea because it is less processed.

i agree with guitar freak.
but is there any chance that oxidation increases caffeine content or preserves it better and thus is more potent in black and oolong teas?

meh. Here's the clearest weblit I could find on the subject, and it does point to references to published, funded articles and such. It's from Stash. Woo.

http://www.stashtea.com/caffeine.htm

Mary R wrote:meh. Here's the clearest weblit I could find on the subject, and it does point to references to published, funded articles and such. It's from Stash. Woo.

http://www.stashtea.com/caffeine.htm

Very interesting Mary...good work.

But I just wonder what scientific proof is behind the figures and is this the result of more than one study.

I found it...bizarre that the article claims the more the leaf is fermented, the more caffeine content in the leaf. I honestly find this hard to believe. Well, what do I know?

Well, back to my basement chem lab...

I can sort of see the connection between fermentation and increased caffeine. After all, blacks get hella beat up during the processing and the oxidation only further serves to weaken cell walls. With all the breaking/bruising/battery, it seems that more of the cellular contents would be able to be released, and with a greater rapidity at that, in the higher processed teas. Maybe that's why we can only get one or two infusions from them too. But then again, I know nothing for certain in this mad, mad world of ours.

It seems odd that tea is the second most imbibed drink, and yet there seems to be so little conclusive evidence on anything related to tea.

I think that perhaps the oxidation process allows the caffeine to be more readily released into water, rather than it actually increasing the volume of caffeine in the tea leaves. From everything I've heard, the caffeine content remains nearly the same in any type of tea, but it just more readily infuses the more oxidized.

=] i love all the speculation...so many minds coming together to attack this pressing issue of the caffeine content of white tea.
so beautiful

According to my Celestial Seasonings Perfectly Pear White Tea, it contains 50mg of caffeine per serving, compared to 90mg for coffee. This is more than black tea, which usually contains 30mg per serving. I find this interesting, consider white tea is known to contain the least amount of caffeine.

Here's the closest I've found to a scientific study thus far:
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/p ... components
This site is great for that kinda thing. Eventually I plan on buying one of the tea science books, but they're expensive.

I pretty much agree with Mary that the oxidation likely makes more available for extraction. Hotter water is also likely to extract more water, but simply having the juices squeezed out and then dried on the outside of the leaf is going to bring out a lot more in the infusion. I would also not discount the chemical changes that may occur during oxidation. I would be extremely surprised to find that absolutely no changes occur during oxidation.