Adding powdered L-theanine to puer

Puerh and other heicha
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powersnacks
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 8:14 pm
Location: New Jersey

Tue Oct 29, 2019 12:23 pm

I have been reading a lot of articles on tea lately on pubmed. Here's an interesting one that compares levels of caffeine an L-theanine across different types of teas:

Theanine and Caffeine Content of Infusions Prepared from Commercial Tea Samples

Lots has been said about L-theanine and tea before. Many folks use L-theanine supplements (pills) to take the edge off or help with anxiety.

Today, I was on the 7th steep of this 2013 YS Autumn Bu Lang raw when I decided to try adding L-theanine directly to the tea. Here's the 7th steep, without any powder added:

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I have a bag of L-theanine in powdered form. The taste is mildly sweet.

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The bag says that 1/16th of a teaspoon is 100mg. I've had heroic doses in the past. It is a dumb idea but (for me) seems safe enough.

Too much will cause anxiety, but a smaller dose is calming. Obligatory warning: I'm not endorsing or condoning anyone else messing with this stuff. That said, if you do your research you should find that L-theanine is generally one of the safer things to play with.

This dose is too large. Next time I would use 1/4 of what I used here:

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L-theanine is a pain in the neck when it comes to mixing. This might be due to age and air in my relatively old bag -- I have clumps that I think an oven would smooth out:

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It took a few minutes of stirring to combine.

The taste was surprisingly unaffected. In the past, I tried mixing L-theanine into coffee, but I didn't like the flavor change.

In cup 8 of my session, the relaxation feeling of the added L-theanine is very present. With respect, this cup suddenly felt like a cup with a ton of cha qi. The energy is off though in a way. It felt like it was missing an extra dimension and was just very loud. Still, pretty strong.

I am curious if this is used to upgrade cheap cakes. Imagine steaming the leaves to press into a cake shape, but using water doped with L-theanine. It is cheap and the LD-50 is sky high.

Might play with this some more regarding amounts, placement (on leaf vs in cup), and spending more time trying to taste differences. From some of the pubmed articles, I expected to taste more umami flavors from this, but I did not.

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https://imgur.com/a/hhYeIl1
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_Soggy_
Posts: 63
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:11 pm
Location: Chicago

Tue Oct 29, 2019 7:45 pm

I picked up some L theanine and GABA pills one day when I was getting back on coffee since it can make slightly jittery/anxious. I find it does help in that scenario. I have not really drank it with tea as I haven't needed it? Maybe if was wanting to go super heavy steeps(or maybe shu) I would try some with it.
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