Is there somewhere I can find out how much caffeine ther si in various
teas?

Is there an online vendor that reports the caffeine content for all or
most of the teas they sell? I found 1 or 2 that had some information,
but none that had it listed with each tea.

As I understand it, the teas ranked fro lowest caffeine to highest
a

Herbals (I know, not really teas)
Greens
Oolongs
Blacks

Where do Puer-ehs fall?

I would guess that whites are close to greens, right?

However, on the few sites that I found that showed caffeine content,
some of the greens were higher than most of the blacks.

--

Hi LurfysMa,
I recently wrote a comment on www.tching.com about this subject. I'll
just copy my post from there, so if anybody read it there, please
forgive me for repeating it here.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about caffeine content in tea.
Everybody is citing the same sources and everybody is repeating the
mantra: "all green teas have a much lower caffeine content than black
teas". While this is true for many green teas, there are - as usual -
exceptions to that rule. In the end, you'd need to test each tea
individually for its caffeine content.

There's one published source of caffeine contents of individual teas
that I'm aware of (maybe you could post others if you know of any),
find it at
http://users.argolink.net/purfarms/komchem/teacaff.htm

The list - although far from complete - is quite revealing. It lists
the caffeine content of a "longjing" (almost everywhere advertised as
a low caffeine tea) as 3.7%, while a "Nilgiri Indian Black" is listed
with 2.3% caffeine content.

Although I think your order is generally correct (with white tea at
the very low end), you see that the question is a little more complex.
As to the listing of caffeine content with every tea on a vendor site:
the cost of the analyses would be very high I guess and most likely,
caffeine content differs from harvest to harvest (although I'd expect
not quite as pronounced as between different teas). So testing would
be continuous AND expensive. That's probably quite prohibitive to tea
vendors, especially since most people don't care to know (or are happy
with the mantra I mentioned above).

If anyone here has in-depth knowledge about this subject, please let
me know!

Jo

On Apr 16, 12:32 pm, LurfysMa > wrote:
> Is there somewhere I can find out how much caffeine ther si in various
> teas?
>
> Is there an online vendor that reports the caffeine content for all or
> most of the teas they sell? I found 1 or 2 that had some information,
> but none that had it listed with each tea.
>
> As I understand it, the teas ranked fro lowest caffeine to highest
> a
>
> Herbals (I know, not really teas)
> Greens
> Oolongs
> Blacks
>
> Where do Puer-ehs fall?
>
> I would guess that whites are close to greens, right?
>
> However, on the few sites that I found that showed caffeine content,
> some of the greens were higher than most of the blacks.
>
> --

Oh, I forgot your question about pu-erhs.

I don't have any scientific basis for this, but I get quite an
intensive "high" from pu-erhs which I attribute to a fair amount of
caffeine.

On 15 Apr 2007 17:57:59 -0700, wrote:

>Oh, I forgot your question about pu-erhs.
>
>I don't have any scientific basis for this, but I get quite an
>intensive "high" from pu-erhs which I attribute to a fair amount of
>caffeine.

Pu-erhs are refermented blacks, right? So, they ought to be at least
as high as blacks, right?

--

On Apr 15, 10:48 pm, LurfysMa > wrote:
> On 15 Apr 2007 17:57:59 -0700, wrote:
>
> >Oh, I forgot your question about pu-erhs.
>
> >I don't have any scientific basis for this, but I get quite an
> >intensive "high" from pu-erhs which I attribute to a fair amount of
> >caffeine.
>
> Pu-erhs are refermented blacks, right? So, they ought to be at least
> as high as blacks, right?
>
> --

Pu-erhs, at least for the shou and aged sheng, are post-fermented
green teas. The variety of tea plant that pu-erh is produced from (C.
sinenesis var. Assamica) is also different from most teas in the
market, including, black teas. I'm guessing that the post-fermentation
process reduces the caffeine content of the pu-erh tea, which I feel
has quite a high caffeine content in its sheng form.

LurfysMa > wrote:
>Is there somewhere I can find out how much caffeine ther si in various
>teas?

No, and this is a big problem..

>Is there an online vendor that reports the caffeine content for all or
>most of the teas they sell? I found 1 or 2 that had some information,
>but none that had it listed with each tea.

No, and what is worse, the method you use to make the tea may affect
things too.

>As I understand it, the teas ranked fro lowest caffeine to highest
>a
>
>Herbals (I know, not really teas)
>Greens
>Oolongs
>Blacks

This is a very hasty generalization. There are some greens which have
lots of caffeine and some blacks which don't.

>However, on the few sites that I found that showed caffeine content,
>some of the greens were higher than most of the blacks.

Right. I don't know of any way short of actually making a cup of tea
and doing an analysis, or drinking it and seeing how it makes you feel.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Actually, I mentioned this to a co-worker who pointed me at:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=43343

which is an article about a home caffeine test that the Wash U
medical school folks are developing.

The standard old-fashioned test is to mix with an oxidizing agent,
then ammonia is added until a color change is seen. In the case
of tea, you have to clear the tannins out by adding a little bit of
portland cement first... the cement adsorbs the tannins and gives
you a cup of clear liquid. These days with cheap mass spectrometry
I don't think anyone bothers but there's no reason you can't do the
caffeine titres in a kitchen at home. I don't know how specific it is
for caffeine, though, and it may also detect other related xanthines
at the same time.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

> Actually, I mentioned this to a co-worker who pointed me at:
>
> http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=43343
>
> which is an article about a home caffeine test that the Wash U
> medical school folks are developing.
>
> The standard old-fashioned test is to mix with an oxidizing agent,
> then ammonia is added until a color change is seen. In the case
> of tea, you have to clear the tannins out by adding a little bit of
> portland cement first... the cement adsorbs the tannins and gives
> you a cup of clear liquid.

Ugh! I don't mind a touch of ammonia in my cup any more than the next
guy, but portland cement ... !

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

On Apr 16, 10:08 am, Lewis Perin > wrote:
> (Scott Dorsey) writes:
> > Actually, I mentioned this to a co-worker who pointed me at:
>
> >http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=43343
>
> > which is an article about a home caffeine test that the Wash U
> > medical school folks are developing.
>
> > The standard old-fashioned test is to mix with an oxidizing agent,
> > then ammonia is added until a color change is seen. In the case
> > of tea, you have to clear the tannins out by adding a little bit of
> > portland cement first... the cement adsorbs the tannins and gives
> > you a cup of clear liquid.
>
> Ugh! I don't mind a touch of ammonia in my cup any more than the next
> guy, but portland cement ... !
>
> /Lew
> ---
> Lew Perin /

My reaction also. The cup you test will not be the cup you drink.
Toci

Lewis Perin wrote:
>> ... you have to clear the tannins out by adding a little bit of
>> portland cement first... the cement adsorbs the tannins and gives
>> you a cup of clear liquid.
>
> Ugh! I don't mind a touch of ammonia in my cup any more than the next
> guy, but portland cement ... !

One old engineering definition of portland cement is "A hydraulic cement
made by finely pulverizing the clinker produced by calcining to
incipient fusion a mixture of calcareous and argillaceous earths."
How could anyone resist such a confection?

Lewis Perin > wrote:
>
>Ugh! I don't mind a touch of ammonia in my cup any more than the next
>guy, but portland cement ... !

Try it. The cement and some tannins precipitate out, and you get a cup that
tastes like tea but is completely clear. It is reportely a popular practical
joke source on construction sites in the UK.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."