Caffeine in Tea -- more info

Hey -- even more great  info about how much caffeine is in tea.

Camellia Sinensis -- tea store and importer extraordinaire in Montreal -- did a test of their own and you can find the results here.  They're also included in their book, recently translated in to english.

Available for sale at their site

What I can't discern from the info on-line is how old the tea was that the tests were done on.  I've always assumed that as teas age and flavour fades everything else does too so that older (stale) tea has less caffeine.  I'm also curious about what the results mean for oolong which one usually steeps for a series of short infusions -- 1 minute, then 30 secs, then 45 secs, etc.  But perhaps it's cumulative time vis a vis the oolongs...?  And the Gyokuro they tested is way down the list while the Hujicha was quite high!  Questions, questions.

UPDATE April 2012: I'm going to Kevin Gascoyne's presentation on this subject at the Tea Expo in June and look forward to the opportunity to get more background information.  (He's one of the partners at Camellia Sinensis.)  More later.

Caffeine in Tea

This is not a tasting post, but rather than wait until my next one I wanted to post this link right away while I have it in my "control c".

It's still puzzling to me how much misinformation there is out there from presumably reputable and well-meaning sources about the caffeine content of tea.

Here's the real scoop, an article titled Too Easy to be True De-bunking the At-Home Decaffeination Myth

written by American Bruce Richardson and based on a scientific study. (The article appeared in the January 2009 edition of Fresh Cup magazine and is copyrighted material.)  The article's focus is another widespread myth about being able to decaffeinate tea by "washing" with hot water, but the testing done to disprove that one provides great information on the caffeine content of tea.  BTW Bruce is the co-author, with renowned UK tea lecturer Jane Pettigrew, of the 2008 expanded edition of The New Tea Companion.

The upshot is that unless you know what kind of tea plant, when and how the tea was made and what part of the plant the tea leaves came from -- there's no way of really knowing how much caffeine is in your cup.  An educated tea drinker though can make a pretty good guess so have a look and become an educated tea drinker too.

P.S.  Enjoying Long Jing (or Lung Jing or Lung Ching, etc) this afternoon.
 

Handsome shiny flat Lung Jing.  

Can't remember where I got this Lung Jing but it still has
some tasty sparkle and zing.