Removing caffeine from tea is a matter of 'washing' it

by Sarah Gilbert, Posted Jan 4th 2006 @ 8:53PM

tea shop in portland chinese gardens Discussing the process of coffee decaffeination in an earlier post, I mentioned my "trick" for keeping the caffeine low in tea: steeping the leaves more than once (and yes, I did admit to using tea bags, a topic for a future post I'm sure). Bruce Dearborn Walker piped in and mentioned that many tea drinkers "wash" their leaves in one quick steeping of hot water before drinking to remove most of the caffeine.

With good tea, a 20- or 30-second steep won't remove much flavor and, in fact, many tea houses wash some types of leaves before serving as a matter of course (like the Tao of Tea in Portland). My big question is, how much caffeine does this really remove? And does it really remove the nutrients, as well? Have any great chemistry minds done the research? And if not, do we have any readers who'd like to dive in and test the caffeine in several varieties of post-wash tea?

[Photo of tea house in Portland Classical Chinese Garden, Sarah Gilbert]

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Filed Under: Hacking Food, On the Blogs, Drink Recipes, How To
Tags: caffeine, decaffeinate, hacking food, loose tea, LooseTea, remove caffeine, RemoveCaffeine, tea, tea wash, teabags, TeaWash, wash tea, WashTea