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Miranda Von Stockhausen. Blooming tea.
True tea, Camellia sinensis, naturally contains caffeine in every cell of the plant. Most of the caffeine can be commercially removed from true tea. Over the past 15 to 20 years, some theories have developed relating to caffeine in tea. One prominent theory involves making your own de-caffeinated tea at home from high-quality loose leaf tea, by rinsing regular tea with hot water, throwing that water out, and then brewing the tea leaves with more boiling water as usual.
Unfortunately, the research done to test this theory has provided conflicting conclusions at best, and recent research indicates that caffeine is not extracted as quickly or completely from the tea leaf as is widely believed. Many tea experts, including tea technologist Nigel Melican, founder and managing director of Teacraft, Ltd., consider the "30-second decaf" theory to be actually debunked, and relegated to the realm of urban myth. The consensus seems to be that it would require a 15 minute -- rather than 30 second -- infusion to produce a virtually caffeine-free cup of tea! After 15 minutes steeping in hot water, most teas would become undrinkably bitter, and would still contain traces of caffeine. While the hot-water decaffeination method does reduce the caffeine in your tea, if you have to avoid all caffeine, you essentially have to avoid all true tea.
Copyright 2010, Elizabeth Urbach. If you want to re-post this article or use it anywhere else, you need to get permission first, include a correct title and byline, and an active link back to this page. I can be reached at southbayladiesteaguild@yahoo.com. Thanks!
Amazing Green Tea
Caffeine In Your Cup
James Norwood Pratt (speaker at the 2009 Tea Expo)
Nigel Melican (speaker at the 2009 Tea Expo)
Nigel Melican's discussion of the decaf-tea myth and again on the Cha Dao blog
Teacraft, Ltd.
"Tea and the rate of its infusion” by Professor Michael Spiro. Published in Chemistry in New Zealand, 1981, pp172-174.
“Too Easy to be True: De-bunking the At-Home Decaffeination Myth” by Bruce Richardson
Comments
Thank you for this excellent article and for actually linking to real research. I had heard the '30 second decaffeination' myth and thought it true... and like many other tea lovers, was needlessly double dipping my tea leaves. I think I will find a better more reliable way to reduce caffeine from this point on. Myth busted!
Hi Ted,
I'm glad I was able to write a helpful article. I, too, was one of the people who thought that decaffeinating a cup of tea could be done in 30 seconds. Although I don't have to avoid all caffeine, myself, I would have tried rinsing my tea leaves before infusing them, if I had! I think the appeal of the 30-second-decaf myth is that it is so convenient and cheap to get decaf tea; you don't have to go out and buy more tea, or put up with lesser flavor, if you can just rinse the caffeine off of your regular favorite tea. Problem is, the caffeine isn't just sitting on the surface of the tea leaves to be rinsed off! It's embedded in the leaf, and while it may indeed *start* coming out of the leaf within the first 30 seconds, it doesn't rush out all at once.
The main frustration I found when researching this myth, is that I couldn't find a link to the 2008 Asbury College study, no matter where I looked!
This is actually true. The hot water will just remove a little of the caffeine and you'll lose the health benefits of the tea leaves. There is no possible way to make Decaf Tea in a time frame 30 seconds.
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