Tea-derived caffeine

[Patjulian80]

I thought I'd create a new topic on caffeine/theine as it's an area that fascinates me—also from a health perspective. So much so that I'm writing a short ebook on it...

What are your experiences with caffeine (and other stimulants) in tea? Good? Bad? Any particular teas worth mentioning?

[Bok]

To be honest, I don’t really notice the caffeine anymore, kind of got accustomed to it. I can by now drink any tea at any time and still sleep. It’s not unheard to have sessions with a few dozens of teas until midnight and fall sound asleep just afterwards.

Some teas might make me “run” the whole night in my dreams, but it’s an exception.

Bad reactions I did only have with fresh sheng. Yuk… nausea and immediately feeling unwell.

[Patjulian80]

@Bok yes, this is what I've heard many tea drinkers say... How good is your sleep? Do awake feeling fully refreshed after having drunk tea in the late evening?

Fresh sheng also gives me trouble—but more to do with its harshness and 'bite'—I even got mouth ulcers once from a hard-brewed gong fu session...

Can you name a tea that makes you 'dream-run'?

[Bok]

I don’t recall any averse effects the day after… not sure if I could say more or less refreshed than without. I have tea almost every night.

What kind of tea? Hard to pinpoint it can happen with all kinds of teas and processing. I suspect it’s got more to do with the leaf and it’s growing environment, how clean or not it is, how farmed/semi wild/wild it is.

[tolean]

I can ,, choose,, in what state to go with most of my teas: meditation, talk mood with friends, body freshness, or mind freshness. But mostly a pretty relaxed state of body and sharp thinking. Speaking of moderate doses 2-3 sessions a day summing 15-20 g of tea leaf. 99% of days one tea is a Shu Puerh and mostly fermented tea or 3 years + whites .
Shu in the morning after a cup of water and breakfast after it. In rest no tea on ,, empty,, stomach.

I have a friend that said : it's like being on amphetamine after tea ( 15g + in one litter thermos, all day brewing and drinking every here and there a cup from it). Same friend goes to sleep instantly after young sheng 2-3 years old, not fresh 1 year shengs. I mean he falls asleep even if he does not want to. He drinks it to get asleep:), not that he can go to sleep he almost can't not go to sleep after young sheng.

[Patjulian80]

I don’t recall any averse effects the day after… not sure if I could say more or less refreshed than without. I have tea almost every night.

What kind of tea? Hard to pinpoint it can happen with all kinds of teas and processing. I suspect it’s got more to do with the leaf and it’s growing environment, how clean or not it is, how farmed/semi wild/wild it is.

I've experienced wild teas to have a more stimulating effect... Is this true for you as well?

[Patjulian80]

I can ,, choose,, in what state to go with most of my teas: meditation, talk mood with friends, body freshness, or mind freshness. But mostly a pretty relaxed state of body and sharp thinking. Speaking of moderate doses 2-3 sessions a day summing 15-20 g of tea leaf. 99% of days one tea is a Shu Puerh and mostly fermented tea or 3 years + whites .
Shu in the morning after a cup of water and breakfast after it. In rest no tea on ,, empty,, stomach.

I have a friend that said : it's like being on amphetamine after tea ( 15g + in one litter thermos, all day brewing and drinking every here and there a cup from it). Same friend goes to sleep instantly after young sheng 2-3 years old, not fresh 1 year shengs. I mean he falls asleep even if he does not want to. He drinks it to get asleep:), not that he can go to sleep he almost can't not go to sleep after young sheng.

Now that's interesting! Talk about caffeine tolerance

[Andrew S]

I think that the difficulty that you'd have is determining what effect caffeine, theanine (not to be confused with théine, aka caffeine) or any other chemicals in tea may have.

Without a detailed chemical analysis of the teas in question and lots of careful experiments, it seems impossible to ascertain precisely how one chemical affects us (not to mention how more than one chemical may interact to create different effects), and looking at such things at a high-level of generality might not be useful for your purposes.

I have absolutely no idea how much caffeine or theanine is in any of my teas, but I know that different teas can make me feel different things.

An unroasted Taiwanese high mountain wulong feels different to a heavily-roasted yancha. And the relaxing feeling that I can get from a heavily-roasted yancha feels different to the relaxing effect that I get from an old cooked puer or an old re-roasted baozhong.

Further, importantly, even within the same category of tea, one might make me feel very relaxed, or contemplative, or elated, whereas another tea might feel like water to me. I don't know why that is, but it seems to be linked at least to how old the bushes are and the conditions in which they were grown. Again, I have no idea how that affects the chemical composition of the teas.

And some teas just make me feel uncomfortable, such as young raw puer. I don't think that that has anything to do with its caffeine level. It also probably isn't linked too closely to the quantity that I'm consuming; I feel great drinking 10g of yancha packed into a tiny pot, but I can feel bad trying 5g of young raw puer.

And the feeling that I get from tea is nothing like the uncomfortable feeling that I tend to get from coffee...

So, that's probably not very helpful to you, but I do think that it is a complicated topic, both in terms of the levels of analysis and experiments required for a detailed analysis of the effects of any given chemicals, as well as in terms of how complex the tea world is even if you're looking at the topic at a less-scientific and more-general level.

Andrew

[tolean]

Also i had one tea ( only one) it was a gushu diang hong (but even if it was called gushu it was from ,,kind of wild old trees,, +- 100 years from a plantation that was a little bit more wild then industrial plantation and after it every time I was getting hmmm let's say horny. I wanted a woman and i was ,,strong,,. If you know what i mean . Not going into details but this was only one tea and it was almost every time after it.

[Victoria]

Also i had one tea ( only one) it was a gushu diang hong (but even if it was called gushu it was from ,,kind of wild old trees,, +- 100 years from a plantation that was a little bit more wild then industrial plantation and after it every time I was getting hmmm let's say horny. I wanted a woman and i was ,,strong,,. If you know what i mean . Not going into details but this was only one tea and it was almost every time after it.

Haha, this is an extremely marketable idea if you could just remember which wild tea it was!

[Patjulian80]

Also i had one tea ( only one) it was a gushu diang hong (but even if it was called gushu it was from ,,kind of wild old trees,, +- 100 years from a plantation that was a little bit more wild then industrial plantation and after it every time I was getting hmmm let's say horny. I wanted a woman and i was ,,strong,,. If you know what i mean . Not going into details but this was only one tea and it was almost every time after it.

Haha, this is an extremely marketable idea if you could just remember which wild tea it was!

Dian Hongs are my black (red) tea of choice—I'll keep an eye out for the 'gushu' label next time I'm shopping

[teatray]

An unroasted Taiwanese high mountain wulong feels different to a heavily-roasted yancha. And the relaxing feeling that I can get from a heavily-roasted yancha feels different to the relaxing effect that I get from an old cooked puer or an old re-roasted baozhong.

Further, importantly, even within the same category of tea, one might make me feel very relaxed, or contemplative, or elated, whereas another tea might feel like water to me. I don't know why that is, but it seems to be linked at least to how old the bushes are and the conditions in which they were grown. Again, I have no idea how that affects the chemical composition of the teas.

And some teas just make me feel uncomfortable, such as young raw puer. I don't think that that has anything to do with its caffeine level. It also probably isn't linked too closely to the quantity that I'm consuming; I feel great drinking 10g of yancha packed into a tiny pot, but I can feel bad trying 5g of young raw puer.

And the feeling that I get from tea is nothing like the uncomfortable feeling that I tend to get from coffee...

Interesting how individual the response is. Similarly to Andrew, the seemingly simpler, straight-caffeine effect from coffee can make me uncomfortable, but sometimes it just delivers a much needed kick. Sencha is perhaps a bit milder, less jittery, maybe a bit less of a kick, but the wakeup is more complex, also refreshing the mind (which coffee often doesn't do for me). Generally, it leaves me in a better state than coffee. Matcha is a speical mood-lifter and at least as good for waking up (if you can spare the time & attention). What if I'm not looking for a kick but for a comforting/relaxing tea? Gaoshan and sheng puer (even though I'm a newb to both) have been the best for me this year. But my experience is also pretty narrow: I just never had an old sheng or shu pu-er I truly like. Some yancha I've tried are intriguing, the effects could be wonderful, but I just never drank them regularly enough to assess.

[Baisao]

I don’t feel the caffeine from tea or coffee very much. I drink both late into the evenings and sleep readily. In gross terms, I do feel more caffeine in C. sinensis-assamica than C. sinensis-sinensis. Some teas, like matcha, make me so relaxed I want to take a nap.

I believe that the stimulation from young sheng is not only caffeine but ephedrine or something like it. The stimulating sensations remind me of ephedrine: it lasts much longer than caffeine, makes my skin crawl, and feels the same in other ways.

[Patjulian80]

An unroasted Taiwanese high mountain wulong feels different to a heavily-roasted yancha. And the relaxing feeling that I can get from a heavily-roasted yancha feels different to the relaxing effect that I get from an old cooked puer or an old re-roasted baozhong.

Further, importantly, even within the same category of tea, one might make me feel very relaxed, or contemplative, or elated, whereas another tea might feel like water to me. I don't know why that is, but it seems to be linked at least to how old the bushes are and the conditions in which they were grown. Again, I have no idea how that affects the chemical composition of the teas.

And some teas just make me feel uncomfortable, such as young raw puer. I don't think that that has anything to do with its caffeine level. It also probably isn't linked too closely to the quantity that I'm consuming; I feel great drinking 10g of yancha packed into a tiny pot, but I can feel bad trying 5g of young raw puer.

And the feeling that I get from tea is nothing like the uncomfortable feeling that I tend to get from coffee...

Interesting how individual the response is. Similarly to Andrew, the seemingly simpler, straight-caffeine effect from coffee can make me uncomfortable, but sometimes it just delivers a much needed kick. Sencha is perhaps a bit milder, less jittery, maybe a bit less of a kick, but the wakeup is more complex, also refreshing the mind (which coffee often doesn't do for me). Generally, it leaves me in a better state than coffee. Matcha is a speical mood-lifter and at least as good for waking up (if you can spare the time & attention). What if I'm not looking for a kick but for a comforting/relaxing tea? Gaoshan and sheng puer (even though I'm a newb to both) have been the best for me this year. But my experience is also pretty narrow: I just never had an old sheng or shu pu-er I truly like. Some yancha I've tried are intriguing, the effects could be wonderful, but I just never drank them regularly enough to assess.

Thanks, Sofia. Yes—matcha is great to wake up with—I find Japanese green teas great for their L-theanine content and I always feel calm and alert afterwards. Good question about something relaxing... Have you tried cold-brewing a kabusecha or a gyokuro? Low caffeine and high L-theanine might be one way to go about it—just a thought.

[Patjulian80]

I don’t feel the caffeine from tea or coffee very much. I drink both late into the evenings and sleep readily. In gross terms, I do feel more caffeine in C. sinensis-assamica than C. sinensis-sinensis. Some teas, like matcha, make me so relaxed I want to take a nap.

I believe that the stimulation from young sheng is not only caffeine but ephedrine or something like it. The stimulating sensations remind me of ephedrine: it lasts much longer than caffeine, makes my skin crawl, and feels the same in other ways.

Very interesting... In Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic, Zhang describes her first encounter with fresh raw puer to be too astringent for her liking... To me, it has always been exactly like that — the stimulative lift is good, but the astringency is overpowering. Perhaps you could experiment with other young shengs?