Multiple Infusions and Caffeine

http://www.thefragrantleaf.com/caffeine.html

If I'm reading this correctly, it would mean that with Western or Japanese style infusion guidelines, only the first infusion contains a noteworthy amount of caffeine. With gong-fu tea, I guess it lasts a few more infusions, but only a few. The later infusions contain little to no caffeine!

Can anybody else back this up? I actually like this idea just fine, because beyond the first morning cups, I'm not really trying to get a ton of caffeine. I usually do a second infusion on my morning tea to drink iced with dinner (if I liked it) and this suits me just fine. It also explains why I don't go bouncing off the walls - to put it another way, there's a finite amount of caffeine in the tea leaves to begin with, and you get most of it in your first cup - so drink up!

Sounds right.

I'm enjoying some tea today. Making the official switch over from diet soda. Brewed some 2009 "Yunnan Pure Bud Bi Luo Chun" Green tea from Jas-ETea.
Had some Gen-Mai Cha Friday when it arrived.

During the days because of limited availability of equipment I'm going to be brewing it "Western" style in a mug and infuser basket. Seems to be working pretty well. Hopefully enough caffeine to ward off the headaches but not enough that I'm causing my heart to pound all day.

From what I gather the 80% in the first 30s is a somewhat dubious claim. Especially when we are discussing whole leaf tea as opposed to the fannings often found in bags

There's a good article on Cha Dao about it but for some reason I can't view it at the moment, maybe you will have better luck:
http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-reality.html

Well, well - I suppose it's nearly the opposite of what was suggested.

That neatly explains my preference for Assams.

It's odd that caffeine dissolves or whatever almost linearly. Makes me want to start chewing on those leaves.

JPDyson said:

Well, well - I suppose it's nearly the opposite of what was suggested.

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Yeah, based on the 2nd page it looks like the caffeine doesn't drop off much unless you're infusions are fairly long in total. If you're into the 4th or 5th infusion you might be knocking down on the caffeine.

jwcarlson said:

Yeah, based on the 2nd page it looks like the caffeine doesn't drop off much unless you're infusions are fairly long in total. If you're into the 4th or 5th infusion you might be knocking down on the caffeine.

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From that article it seems that you would measure the total time in hot water. Gong fu brewers would need to use the sum of the infusion/steep time to extrapolate the extraction percentage.

arghblech said:

From that article it seems that you would measure the total time in hot water. Gong fu brewers would need to use the sum of the infusion/steep time to extrapolate the extraction percentage.

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This

arghblech said:

From that article it seems that you would measure the total time in hot water. Gong fu brewers would need to use the sum of the infusion/steep time to extrapolate the extraction percentage.

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That's what I meant up above. The only issue I see with this is how do you know the "original caffeine content" of the tea you're drinking? It seems to suggest that white teas have the most... but is there a rough idea of how many milligrams are in a given amount of tea?

jwcarlson said:

That's what I meant up above. The only issue I see with this is how do you know the "original caffeine content" of the tea you're drinking? It seems to suggest that white teas have the most... but is there a rough idea of how many milligrams are in a given amount of tea?

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from the article:

2. Black and green tea manufactured from leaf from the same bushes on the same day will have virtually the same caffeine levels (within +/- 0.3&#37

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Figures quoted in the article are not given in milligrams but as percentages, generally around 1-6 percent. I'm sure you can work out the weights from there if needed but the general gist is that the tea bush is the main factor, not the processing.

The brewing method may be more important than the tea here. Bathing some white tea in 70C water for a minute or so is going to yield different results to dowsing it in boiling water in a preheated clay pot.

I suspect that much of the common knowledge in regards to white or green teas being lower in caffeine than say red teas is correct in that the chemical composition and like for like comparisons go out the window when the method for obtaining the liquor is very different.

It's nice to see someone brewing all these teas in an identical manner and recording the results but it does feel a little redundant as I get the feeling the end results of the experiments is lots of data on cups of tea I probably wouldn't enjoy drinking.

In the Hicks et al experiment the first reading was taken a 5 mins with 69% and then extrapolated backwards

Science is handy here but it's no substitute for drinking tea and paying attention to what happens. As mentioned in the article there's something to be said for the interplay between caffeine and theanine too, and lets not forget that wonderful cha qi......