Caffeine content in pu erh teas?

[dagestan1980]

Is it true that most of the Caffeine is gone from pu erh teas after first rinse when we clean the tea and make leaves open, thus making puerh a low Caffeine drink?

[entropyembrace]

It´s not tue, caffiene doesn´t extract anywhere near that quickly from tea.

[bryan_drinks_tea]

What entropy says is true. Also, the amount of caffeine present differs from tea to tea, and some may argue that our diet and how we are feeling that day may also have some effect, though I wouldn't say that's a solid fact.

[AllanK]

Is it true that most of the Caffeine is gone from pu erh teas after first rinse when we clean the tea and make leaves open, thus making puerh a low Caffeine drink?

While I don't think a quick rinse will reduce the caffeine content I do wonder if a seriously long first steeping, western style, then thrown away will reduce the caffeine content in the second steeping. In theory, 3g of Puerh tea only has a certain amount of caffeine. If you extract most of it in a first steeping, less is available for the second steeping. However, you are also throwing away that tastiest first steeping.

[PurplePotato]

A previous post from entropyembrace (love the forum name btw)

I generally rinse all my teas for about... perhaps 15 seconds? (I count [mutter] to 30 for about 2-3 long breaths).
The people I get my tea from (a local vendor), says that even if the tea is clean, the first brew typically contains all the caffeine, afterwards, the following brews contain no caffeine (and if there is any, I assume the amount is negligable).

This is absolutely untrue. I have posted on this forum in the past peer reviewed scientific studies on tea extractions which demonstrated that it can take 15 minutes or more to extract all of the caffeine from tea.

http://www2.hcmuaf.edu.vn/data/lhquang/ ... nthine.pdf

theres also http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.login.ez ... 5/abstract but you need access to read it

and I originally found those papers through a summary on Cha Dao http://chadao.blogspot.ca/2008/02/caffe ... ality.html

the 15 minutes thing I've said often came from Nigel's maths based on the results of those two papers.

So basically, if your first steep is long enough to significantly reduce the caffeine content of a resteep, then you've probably lost a majority of your flavor. I have heard things saying that roasting lowers caffeine level, but I've seen no evidence of this (I would love to see evidence if anyone knows of any).

[AllanK]

Puerh produced from large leafed variety tea, as all puerh should be, should have less caffeine than a comparable small leaf tea. Scientific studies have shown that certain parts of the tea leaf such as the bud have more caffeine and that larger leaves have less caffeine. However, since puerh often includes a high percentage of buds this may not always be true. It is not usually possible to know the specific pattern of leaves to buds in a tea.