Note: This is a follow-up post to my first post on caffeine in tea, which was written about a year and a half ago.
Normally, I don’t really revisit tea topics because I don’t really feel the need to re-research everything, but I came across this information in 日本茶のすべてがわかる本 and I thought it was worth sharing.
My first post ended on an ambiguous note because I couldn’t find out which type of tea had the most caffeine, but I now have a chart which might provide more clarity. The people producing the chart belong to an NPO promoting Japanese tea, so my gut feeling is that this should be reliable.
| Type of Tea | % of Caffeine per cup |
| Matcha | 3.2% |
| Gyokuro | 3.5% |
| Sencha | 2.3% |
| Kamairicha (Pan-fried tea) | 2.5% |
| Bancha | 2.0% |
| Houjicha | 1.9% |
| Oolong Tea | 2.4% |
| Black Tea | 2.9% |
The previous post basically said that “there are too many factors to take into account” which is somewhat true, but the table does make sense to me too. Some points that I noticed:
- You drink the whole (shaded) leaf in matcha, which means that the caffeine level should be high.
- Older leaves, like bancha, have less caffeine, while younger and shaded leaves, like gyokuro, have more.
- In this chart, black tea does have more caffeine than sencha (a typical green tea), but I’m assuming that this is using the Assam leaves, which is supposed to have a higher caffeine content (whereas I assume that Zuo, Yuegang, Hao Chen, and Yiwei Deng (2002) looked at the caffeine level in Chinese black tea, that was made with the var. Sinesis leaves which would have a lower caffeine content (hence its ranking behind Chinese green and oolong teas).
Overall, I think this table is a helpful guide to thinking about the caffeine content in various teas. There are, of course, many factors to consider when you’re trying to compare the amount of caffeine in two types of teas, but perhaps the most sensible option is to build up your caffeine tolerance so that this doesn’t become an issue.
Nitty Gritty Notes about the Table
I copied the table as it was from the book, but it’s not the most easy to understand. Things that I would have liked to know:
- Where the black and oolong teas were from
- Caffeine in Puer
And although the table was comparing one cup of tea across the tea types, they decided to make the tea according to how people would make and serve each type of tea in Japan, which means that the preparation method and serving size are not standard. I could use math to make things equal, but just changing the ration of tea to water would affect the amount of caffeine so just manipulating the data would not provide something accurate. Instead, here’s the brewing parameters for you to also take into consideration when looking at the table above:
| Tea Type | Brewing Parameters | Serving Size |
| Matcha | NIL | per 2g of tea |
| Gyokuro | 10g of tea to 60ml water | 12ml |
| Sencha | 10g of tea to 430ml water | 80ml |
| Kamairicha (Pan-fried tea) | 10g of tea to 430ml water | 80ml |
| Bancha | 15g of tea to 650ml water | 120ml |
| Houjicha | 15g of tea to 650ml water | 120ml |
| Oolong | 15g of tea to 650ml water | 120ml |
| Black tea | 5g of tea to 360ml water | 170ml |
I’m not enthused that the brewing parameters are so different, but I do understand the logic behind it. If you want to compare the caffeine levels in different types of tea and want it to be relevant to the average tea drinker, than you have to use the average cup of tea, made the way the average tea drinker would. We could use 5g to 100ml and pour out all the tea, but the teas would probably not be what people drank (especially if the steeping time was the same), which would make things unrealistic. It’s like how people say “lab experiments prove that green tea makes you lose weight/prevent cancer” but then don’t tell you that in that experiment, the people were fed unnatural amounts of green tea or were given green tea extract in the form of pills, etc.
This was actually pretty fun to write. I do need a reason to continue making my way through the 日本茶のすべてがわかる本 book so if you have a question on Japanese tea, let me know and I’ll look it up and write a post on it. Or if you want me to practice my Chinese, you could ask me something about Chinese tea.
Featured Image: Photo by Me
Interesting! But, I am sometimes confused by brewing parameters. For example, I recently bought Snow Dragon Yellow Buds Yellow Tea and followed the brewing recommendations in “the Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook” that called for 2 or more tablespoons steeped for 90 seconds, but got a liquor that barely had any flavor. Very, very mild. The recommendations for Po-Nay Pu-erh were 3 tablespoons of tea steeped for 25 seconds after a first rinse. That seemed like a lot of tea and weighed more than the 5 recommended grams. The tea tasted pretty good, though, even though the aroma was a little harsh. I followed the directions using the recommended weight instead of the tablespoon count for a new tea I purchased: Pi Lo Chun Green Tea. The shopkeeper recommended it, but I found it to have a funky taste. Ever try it?
I’ve had Bi Lo Chun but not the funky taste… not sure if tea storage at the shop affected it.
For the yellow tea, it’s generally quite mild – my experience it’s that it’s very much like a green tea but with nutty notes. How much water were you using? That may be a factor. Or it could be a temperature thing too – in China all teas are made with boiling water.
Hi again, Eustacia–Thanks for responding. I was thinking the same thing about the Green tea. Could have been in the store too long, exposed to light, etc. I have been using about six ounces of water for the Yellow Tea. I tried adding a little more tea last night and was successful in coaxing out a little more flavor. I’ll keep experimenting!
BTW, Happy New Year!
Six ounces may be a bit much – I normally use slightly over 4 ounces. I’m glad adding more tea got you more flavour, perhaps you can reduce the amount of water as well?
OK. I will reduce the amount of water next time. Let me ask a question, however. Some teas indicate that you can have numerous infusions and, of course, the flavor of the tea changes with each infusion. I like tea, but I rarely drink more than two cups. Is it common for tea-lovers in Singapore/Malaysia to have more than that number at one sitting? Once you have a cup, do you reuse the pot throughout the day? In the US, we are just used to preparing our tea, drinking it and then disposing of the infused tea leaves.
If you’re drinking gongfu-style tea, it’s normal for us to have multiple cups. Especially since the gongfu cups are very small (maybe 50ml a cup?) so they are very easy to finish. Thanks to that, I try to steep teas as many times as possible (depends on the leaves). A cold-brew after the normal hot-steeps is a great way to get one last cup of the leaves for me (: