Hot water decaffeination

[Bakkoi]

Have you tried it? For those who are unfamiliar with it, it essentially means throwing away the first steeping of your tea (ideally a short first steeping).

Particularly for green tea, which always seems to have the most 'kick' for me despite the science I've read about it.

Is it worth it dumping out that umami-filled first infusion? How much caffeine do we really get rid of anyway?

[bearsbearsbears]

"As well as reducing product quality, commercial decaffeination is an expensive process that takes hours of production time and doubles the raw material price of a pound of tea. How likely is it therefore that the accountants at Lipton and similar packers would have overlooked a simple and inexpensive process that removes 80% of caffeine in 30 seconds? Yet this myth exists and is propagated daily by retailers and tea gurus without any other basis than that they wish it were true, therefore it must be. So: what, then, are the facts?"

To read those facts, read the rest: http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caff ... ality.html

[Chip]

I think almost every avid tea drinker believed this at some point, because this is what we were told by ... most likely vendors or similar.

I believed this until reading the facts here of TeaChat through a link such as the one provided by Bears ...

Whether I believed it or not, I never tried it out since I like the first steep of all my personal fave teas.

[Cole]

Seeing how the caffeine is released at higher temperatures, you would have to scald your first infusion to really make this work, right?

I think it's kind of silly; IMHO. The first steeping is sometimes the best!