Anti-oxidant power of raw vs ripe puerh

[allthebest4u]

My burning question regards the anti- oxidantant power of sheng vs shu puerh. I am close to 65 yrs so aging sheng puerh makes little sense. But I'm very interested in a beverage that will maintain my health. I've bought a variety of cakes but wonder if shu or sheng would be better for me. I've read that shu is not regarded as legitimate pu by some purists but I really don't know.

Here's the crux of the biscuit...
I have 30 years of experience of preparing Chinese tonic herbs. All these years the common thread is that the older the herb is, the less potent.

So if puerh's flavor improves with age it must be at the expense of it's power.
I welcome feedback on this.

[entropyembrace]

The anti-oxidant power of fermented tea is going to be reduced compared to fresh tea. It doesn't matter if that's because it was fermented quickly as in shu pu or slowly as in aged sheng. There's other reasons to drink those teas, mainly because people enjoy them, also they seem to be good for digestion. Among puerh sheng from the most recent harvest will be best but...The best anti-oxidant power of any tea will be from deep steamed green tea (fukamushi sencha).

That said all true tea is fairly similar chemically and is not a powerful medicine so I doubt it will have a dramatic alteration to your health unless you're using it as a substitute for less healthy beverages like soda or alcohol.

[steanze]

Usually the tea with the most antioxidants is matcha, because you actually drink the powdered leaves.

[entropyembrace]

Usually the tea with the most antioxidants is matcha, because you actually drink the powdered leaves.

Actually, this doesn't matter because the solubility of tea catechins in water is very high (better than sodium chloride salt for Epigallocatechin gallate )

[steanze]

Interesting I was referring to lab tests reported in the first edition of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Terroirs-Vari ... ywords=tea e.g. page 258, concentration of antioxidants measured by means of the ABTS-TEAC3 metod. Matcha Sendo: 3775 micromoles/250ml, Long Jing Shi Feng: 2200 micromoles/250ml, Sheng pu erh 2006: 975 micromoles/250ml (the book was published in 2011, so the pu erh was about 4-5 years old).

It may well be for reasons other than the fact that in the case of matcha you eat the leaves though.

[steanze]

I wonder if the solubility is affected by the integrity of the leaves - matcha then might have more antioxidants because it is ground to a powder and this would allow for better extraction of the antioxidants. What do you think entropyembrace?

[chrl42]

Interesting I was referring to lab tests reported in the first edition of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Terroirs-Vari ... ywords=tea e.g. page 258, concentration of antioxidants measured by means of the ABTS-TEAC3 metod. Matcha Sendo: 3775 micromoles/250ml, Long Jing Shi Feng: 2200 micromoles/250ml, Sheng pu erh 2006: 975 micromoles/250ml (the book was published in 2011, so the pu erh was about 4-5 years old).

It may well be for reasons other than the fact that in the case of matcha you eat the leaves though.

That's a very good source, I've always heard white tea has the highest amount of anti-oxidant...maybe lab testers didn't drink Japanese teas then.

[entropyembrace]

Interesting I was referring to lab tests reported in the first edition of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Terroirs-Vari ... ywords=tea e.g. page 258, concentration of antioxidants measured by means of the ABTS-TEAC3 metod. Matcha Sendo: 3775 micromoles/250ml, Long Jing Shi Feng: 2200 micromoles/250ml, Sheng pu erh 2006: 975 micromoles/250ml (the book was published in 2011, so the pu erh was about 4-5 years old).

It may well be for reasons other than the fact that in the case of matcha you eat the leaves though.

I think it's because the matcha is a steamed green tea it's pretty similar to other Japanese greens in this paper which tested several types of Japanese and Chinese tea http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf980223x

I recall reading another paper which established a link between steaming and catechin content but I dont have a citation handy for it, sorry

[chrl42]

Interesting I was referring to lab tests reported in the first edition of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Terroirs-Vari ... ywords=tea e.g. page 258, concentration of antioxidants measured by means of the ABTS-TEAC3 metod. Matcha Sendo: 3775 micromoles/250ml, Long Jing Shi Feng: 2200 micromoles/250ml, Sheng pu erh 2006: 975 micromoles/250ml (the book was published in 2011, so the pu erh was about 4-5 years old).

It may well be for reasons other than the fact that in the case of matcha you eat the leaves though.

I think it's because the matcha is a steamed green tea it's pretty similar to other Japanese greens in this paper which tested several types of Japanese and Chinese tea http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf980223x

I recall reading another paper which established a link between steaming and catechin content but I dont have a citation handy for it, sorry

But unlike Japanese varietal (might have taken from China's Zhejiang or Jiangsu province), Puerh has many varietals,

from small, middle and big...plantation, old leaves, arbor etc. Some varietals like Yibang might share similar characterics with the Japanese one.

But your analysis is focused on the process of making that I've taken

[steanze]

I think it's because the matcha is a steamed green tea it's pretty similar to other Japanese greens in this paper which tested several types of Japanese and Chinese tea http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf980223x

I recall reading another paper which established a link between steaming and catechin content but I dont have a citation handy for it, sorry

Thanks for the paper! It's really interesting. It seems that the average total content of catechins in Chinese green teas and Japanese green teas is very similar (17.86+-0.69 for the Chinese greens, 17.80+-0.90 for the Japanese). This seems odd if the steaming leads to higher amounts of catechins... but it's also true that we don't really know whether they picked a representative sample, it's possible that for the Chinese teas they picked teas that have more catechins to start with. Ideally we'd need to split the harvest from a few farms into two and steam half of the tea

[kyarazen]

the season of harvest determines the antioxidant content, so does the time of harvest.

relative to other green teas, sheng pu-erh will definitely fall back in antioxidant content, in the manufacture, the sun drying of maocha is essential. photo-oxidation occurs.

the level of antioxidants increases with increasing sunlight in the season as the plant defends itself from damaging UV rays. gushu sheng pu-er picked in summer is undrinkably astringent.

[steanze]

I recall reading another paper which established a link between steaming and catechin content but I dont have a citation handy for it, sorry

Found it! Here's the paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0003597 Then probably the samples in the other paper are not representative

[steanze]

Puerh has many varietals,

from small, middle and big...plantation, old leaves, arbor etc.

I didn't find a paper looking at catechins content as a function of leaf size and plantation VS gu shu... we need a lab!

This paper though is pretty cool: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ated=false

it asked tasters to rate different pu erh teas and correlated the taste ratings with content of aminoacids and catechins. It turns out that the amount of aminoacids is significantly correlated with both aroma and taste, but the amount of catechins is not correlated with either.
Citing from the paper: "Seven samples (1 kg each) of pu-erh tea produced by Yunnan Dali Tea Factory and Yunnan Tea Import and Export Cooperation were bought from Beijing Maliandao Tea Market (Table 1). "
I remember someone saying that a cake is a sample...

[entropyembrace]

I recall reading another paper which established a link between steaming and catechin content but I dont have a citation handy for it, sorry

Found it! Here's the paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0003597 Then probably the samples in the other paper are not representative

That's the one, thanks

I think that the sample sizes are probably too low in the paper I linked to make really confident generalizations especially since there's other things that can alter the catechin concentration in the leaves. I liked the one you dug up since they started with the same fresh leaves and processed them in different ways

Like chrl42 says the genetic diversity for tea is huge in Yunnan compared to Japan and any other tea growing region for that matter, and like kyarazen says UV exposure is important too.

I still think sencha is going to be the most reliably high in antioxidants because it's grown in the sun and steamed to kill green immediately and there's less variation between one sencha and the next than between random Chinese greens or Sheng pu-erhs.

I would like to see a tea chemistry paper where they actually look at unaged sheng puerh though...I've only seen what's probably shu?

[steanze]

I would like to see a tea chemistry paper where they actually look at unaged sheng puerh though...I've only seen what's probably shu?

Here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 4608003282

I think GTL is young sheng, F is aged sheng, PP is shu. Although I don't know what to make of the data for aged sheng because they don't say how old it is nor in which conditions it was aged...