TeaChat

I am trying to find decaffinated Earl Grey Green Tea, but can't seem to locate any. Does anyone know a source? Please?

Loose or bagged?

If you are looking for it in teabags I'm guessing that you should be able to find Decaf Early Grey in most grocery stores, or at least you can in my area.

For loose Decaf Earl Grey Adagio sells it here

Opps sorry about missing the "green" part the first time around. Regardless you are still in luck as Dragonwater has some Decaf Sencha Earl Grey tea.

Thank you for the post. I wonder if you have seen bagged Earl Grey Decaf Green tea? If not, do you have a recommendation as to the best way to use loose? I have seen reusable muslin teabags and metal infuser balls. Do you have a preference?

Thanks again.

The Earl

Well the best way is to brew the tea loose in the teapot. I personally use an infuser ball since it's easier to clean than the reusable tea bag.

Caffeine only develops in tea during the oxidation process. A process that black tea goes during its fermentation.

Green tea doesn't have this fermentation process and so its caffeine content is very, very low anyway. You'd probably find little difference in caffeine content between a decaf and non-decaf green tea - if you could find a decaf green in the first place.

Actually Ashiro, that's dead wrong. Only puerh undergoes true fermentation, while oolongs and blacks are oxidized. Anyway, caffeine is not "developed" during oxidation– it's already there in the living plant.

Also, green tea does have a significant amount of caffeine. Perhaps not as much as black tea, but certainly more than decaf.

Ditto everything Scruff said, and here's my two cents to boot:

The extent of processing undergone by black teas is (usually) much higher than anything oolongs, greens, and whites go through. Consequently, black tea leaves are a bit more 'broken up' on the cellular level, which allows those cell contents to infuse into water more readily. I'd bet my car that this accounts for the higher amount of caffeine in black teas, followed by (you guessed it), oolong, green, then white.

Amounts of caffeine can also differ across the many varietals of the tea plant itself, but I would still put my money on the advanced cell rupture of blacks to account for the caffeine in the cup.

The higher temps that black tea is steeped at, and the longer steep times might also be a factor. Hopefully we're going to kill off some of these myths about caffeine in tea here...

Case & point: Matcha

Matcha is powdered green tea, so when you drink it, you consume the whole leaf. The word around here is that matcha gives a bigger buzz than any black tea. I call it the "expresso" of tea.