TeaChat

Hullo,
Is Houjicha truly lower caffeine than other teas? I've seen this several places, including one thread here, but I haven't seen this substantiated except in a single study with a single brand of Houjicha. And if so, do we know how much lower?

Also, I'm looking at Den's organic Houjicha. Any experiences here with it? Are there other organic Houjichas anyone would recommend?
My wife wants to stick to organic while pregnant...

Thanks!

What I heard was caffeine amount varies depending on harvest season of tea leaves used for hojicha. Also it changes batch by batch, so it is very difficult to determine the exact amount.

However, generally speaking, sencha contains about 3% of caffeine. Hojicha contains less than 2%. That means hojicha has more than 30% less caffeine than sencha.

Unable to substantiate with any studies, however kuki-houjicha is bound to be lower in caffeine as it is just stems (some selections include a percentage of leaf particles as well).

I would guess that green kukicha is also lower.

Sorry, I never looked for studies on this though I often wondered if they existed as well.

Here is an interesting post i came across concerning caffeine content on the Everyone's Tea blog.

Thank you all

I liked den's organic houjicha , the two organic genmaicha were good too,

however, not a fan of the sencha though, better organic sencha found elsewhere for cheaper (at least to my tastes)

Roasting destroys part of the caffeine content in tea, that's why houjicha has very few caffeine.
Darker coffee roasts contain less caffeine than lighter roasts, because of the same reason.

Hmm... is high fired oolong low on caffine?

That dark roast coffee thing is questionable at least: http://coffeefaq.com/site/node/15

The real reason I believe is because it has second flush leaves and stems.

Thanks for the article.
Still it doesn't deny that roasting decreases caffeine content, read line 5.
Although buds and higher leaves have more caffeine than lower leaves, at later flushes overall caffeine levels increase.

It doesn't deny that some caffeine is lost, but It does say caffeine by weight increases. Weight seems to be the obvious way to measure this.

The article talks about roasting coffee beans and how they lose water content, so that weight and volume is different in light roast vs dark roast.
However, houjicha is made by roasting bancha, which was dry to begin with, so I can't imagine how the weight vs volume problem would apply here, especially since we aren't comparing roasts.
The fact is that roasting decreases caffeine content in tea leaves. To what extent is another issue.

Umm... unfinished bancha isn't dry at all.

What do you mean by unfinished?

To make houjicha you just have to roast bancha, the actual bancha you buy as a finished product. In fact you can roast your own houjicha at home.

The bancha you have at home has a moisture content to it that will be reduced by home roasting. I am not sure if commercial bancha intended for roasting goes through an initial drying or not.

Regular finished sencha has a moisture content of only about 2%-3% so it's not like it's going to loose a lot more weight when you bake it...