Two things, Mike:

1. "Different puers do indeed contain different amounts of caffeine"?
Common, Mike - 1.7 vs. 3.4% is statistically not a difference - although it
appear to be "twice", but it is only with a 1.7 total percent!. I am sure
they would get the same difference if they would measure not a one, but
several samples of the same tea with different temperatures!

2. The extraction from green teas is slower and the obly way to really
measure teh caffeine content is to do multiple steeps until there is no
caffeine left in teas and calculate the sum.

3. Caffeine is highly soluble, you are absolutely right. But you also have
to take into consideration that to enter solution it has first be extracted
from the dead cells of the tealeaf, and that takes time. And mechanical
properties of the tea play critical role in that delay. I very much doubt
that any significant portion of caffeine is extracted during short washing
period, because the leaves must first be saturated with water to expand and
this take time. I actually think that with puerhs and green teas the second
and the third steeps (especially the second) is the most caffeinated.

Sasha.



"Mike Petro" > wrote in message
...
>
>>Puerh has the same amount of caffeine (by weight) and depending on
>>technology can give it up quicker and slower. Same while leaf vs broken,
>>temperature, steeping time etc. But nothing is better than direct
>>measurment. If you have a liquid chromatograph handy.
>>
>>Sasha.
>
> Different puers do indeed contain different amounts of caffeine and it
> does appear that green puer is lower than most. See
> http://www.holymtn.com/tea/teacaffeine.htm for more info. They used
> reversed phase liquid chromatography with UV detection for their
> study.
>
> Caffeine is extremely water soluble. Most traditional methods of
> brewing puer involve "washing" the tea, literally rinsing it one or
> two times with hot, often boiling, water. I suspect that this is
> tantamount to significantly decaffeinating the tea. While I have never
> seen a study of available caffeine "after" washing, deductive
> reasoning certainly supports this theory.
>
>
> Mike Petro
> http://www.pu-erh.net
> remove the "filter" in my email address to reply