If you need a caffeine-free alternative in the meantime, check out rooibos. It's not tea, biologically speaking, but it's a great approximation and it has a really nice red color.
I really dislike Rooibos and find it unlike tea in many ways. It has a grassy smell and it tastes very tannic and astringent compared to regular tea.
I find my favorite caffeine-free replacement is chaga infusions. You can taste it isn't tea but it reminds me of a strong oolong mixed with a tiny bit of orange pekoe.
I'm drinking real South African rooibos right now and it is sweet and smooth. Truly, what you and the other commenter comparing it to dung are describing sounds nothing like rooibos!
Hibiscus (usually mixed with raspberry and other fruits/berries) and peppermint are also great caffeine-free alternatives.
Chaga is another interesting tea. It's a mushroom that has been found to have antiinflammatory properites and is supposed to boost your immune system. (You can also get capsules.) Whether it works or not, I don't know, but as a tea it's not bad.
My local tea shop tells me it's easy to get near caffeine-free tea: as caffeine goes quickly into the water you simply pour water once, let it sit for 3-10 seconds and then throw the water out and pour fresh water on the leaves. I've not done any kind of scientific test on this but when I do it I get the impression that there is definitely an effect.
I'm wondering if that's a possibly unrecognised effect of the Japanese/Chinese "washing of leaves" before use - I always got the impression that's mainly something they do with Pu Errh tea (which has to "age" for years and is thus dusty) = because they don't trust that the leaves are clean.
Check out this blog post[0] for data on at-home decaffeination by steeping. It requires a much longer steep than most people think.
Related note: An interesting paper[1] found "no observable trend in caffeine concentration due to the variety of tea", meaning that green tea doesn't necessarily have less caffeine than black tea, for example.
Green teas have about the same amount of caffeine. If anything, they'd have more since they are less processed. But as prepared, they have a lot less because they are steeped for shorter periods of time and with cooler water.
White tea has such little caffeine because it is steeped for only a few seconds at a low temperature. Again, it's the difference in preparation methods rather than the leaf.
The Truth Behind DIY Decaf
Science has not only disproves the idea that you can make naturally decaffeinated tea with a hot water rinse but, worse yet, studies have shown that this kind of preparation method removes many of the antioxidants, but very little of the caffeine.
Then it seems like the obvious conclusion would be... to do the exact opposite?
Steep the tea for just 30 seconds and then drink that? Because then you'd get most of the antioxidants and very little caffeine? (And a very decent amount of flavor, even if it's not the full palette -- plus very few tannins.)
Why are you worried about antioxidants being removed? I thought that the supposed health benefits of antioxidants had turned out to be mostly not what we thought.
The same behavior can also be exploited for the inverse effect. Solubility of caffeine in water is greatly boosted with temperature. Many of the bitter compounds in tea extract at a comparatively slower rate, particularly as temps approach 100°C. If you want a caffeine hit with a decent flavour steep a high number of tea bags in boiling water for very short amount of time.
My dealer (Taiwanese, direct importer) confessed that she doesn’t even use the accoutrements any more. She just puts the leaves in a cup and refills it when it’s half empty. I can get at least half a day out of a serving of leaves with black or any good green tea.
Interesting little effect of this: the leaves reconstitute when you do this (better teas have whole leaves). By the time you dump it out the tea looks like leaves again.
For those looking for low-caffeine green teas: I recommend checking out twig teas. Twig teas taste awesome, yet because there's little caffeine in the twigs they have a very-low caffeine content. In Japan they are called karigane (or kukicha). I am pretty biased, as Karigane is my favorite tea... I'm pretty sure there are equivalent in mainland China or Taiwan?
Green tea can be infused several times. Usually, the caffeine is pretty much gone after the first round. Plus, with some teas, the finer nuances of taste only come out in the third or fourth infusion.
So if you want caffeine-free tea, you can use green tea and throw out the first infusion (or give it to somebody else).
> “There used to be an old Chinese saying when brewing oolong tea: 'The first brew is for your enemy, the second for the servant, the third for your wife, fourth for your mistress, the fifth for your business partner and the last you keep for yourself,” says Lovell.
"the third for your wife, fourth for your mistress"
Cheeky :)
Very interesting to learn this, since I had always assumed the first brew to be the best. I wonder, does this make reusing teabags a good idea, as well?
Maybe my standards are just very low, but I have had a fairly consistent experience of getting decent second infusions out of fairly pedestrian teas. Maybe the timing has an impact on this, I rarely let my tea sit for more than 60-90 seconds, unless it's Oolong.
> I wonder, does this make reusing teabags a good idea, as well?
For green tea and Oolong, I don't see why that should not work. I have not seen Oolong in bags, though, and green tea in bags is fairly rare in Germany. But it should work, for all I can tell.
> I always got the impression that's mainly something they do with Pu Errh tea (which has to "age" for years and is thus dusty) = because they don't trust that the leaves are clean.
Isn't it also the normal chinese method for oolong? "Wash" brew once for a short time (a few seconds) to open up the leaves, then rebrew with small steeping increments (probably depends on the specific but the teas I got suggested 20~30s initial brewing — after the wash — and 5~10 seconds increment).
With the Chinese method, you also have to use large amounts of tea - as in, the cup should be full of leaves, at least after they're opened from the brewing.
I believe that’s the official line but I can’t help noticing that it also gets the little bits of tea leaves that would be missed by the traditional straining method.
I think it’s more the small quantities consumed and the l theanine taking the edge off.
But I’ve gotten buzzed off of this kind of tea at a tasting. That was about a dozen 1 oz cups of five different varieties (which means a lot of second and a couple of third steeps).
My experience making tea from random substances suggested to me that there is nothing special about the flavor of tea. Many plants taste similar when you dry and pour hot water over them. I assume the reason it became a popularity beverage is solely due to caffeine content.
Originally, caffeine content was probably an important factor. There's a study that showed participants developed a preference for the taste of drinks that were accompanied with caffeine and theobromine. This preference became "highly significant" over the course of 6 tasting sessions:
But consider that tea has been selectively bred for taste over the course of millennia, with different cultivars seeking out different ideals of taste, combined with a history of experimenting to find the tastiest methods of processing and preparation for specific cultivars of tea.
If you're talking about tea bags commonly found in grocery stores, then yes, it could be any drinkable plant with added caffeine, and nobody would notice. But there is definitely something special about the taste of a good sencha or long jing.
There is no “the flavor” of tea, though. There are hundreds of different flavor profiles in the oolong category alone (depending on the mountain, weather, season, tea tree, insect presence, etc.), to say nothing of the vast differences between red, yellow, white, Japanese green, Chinese green, pu’er, and other broader types. Loose-leaf tea can be incredibly flavorful from the leaves alone, though of course the preparation technique matters a lot too.
Have you written about this anywhere (or can you point me toward someone who has)? I've had teas made from myriad wild/edible plants in the Pacific Northwest, and am always interested in learning more about others' experiments.
At work one time, there was a box of quite tasty Lapsang Souchong tea, which had a slight smoky flavor; I drank a few cups of this tea and didn't think too much about it.
Then, on my drive home, it took me a little while to figure out why my mouth tasted like I had been smoking cigars. Something about the smoky-leafy aftertaste confused my brain.
I like the taste of tea but one of my favorite things about tea is the effect. Apparently some or all of the effect is the result of the combination of caffeine and L-theanine. So I'd likely pass on this one and just have an herbal tea if it's too late.
I'm not much of a fan of non alcoholic beer either.
Did two things:
1. Got my caffeine intake to zero over a month. Basically, no coffee or tea (don't drink sodas or anything else) for four weeks.
2. Started to have a strong espresso with two L-Theanine pills very morning before workout.
Noticed a much improved ability to concentrate on mundane tasks, and much less procrastination. I think, effect lasted for some 6-8 weeks, after that got off by drinking coffee during the day as well, so not sure what actually stopped the effect - caffeine or l-theanine tolerance.
I've been on and off L-theanine in different forms but regulated regimens for around 8 years. Of course my experience is just anecdotical and applies only to my metabolism and psychology but your case sounds like what happens when I get tolerance to L-theanine. The capsules do that for me pretty fast, but if I rotate between L-theanine rich Korean Sencha, Oolong and Gyokuro/matcha the effect never goes away.
I only need to not get too high on caffeine and to not repeat the same tea so much, if I do when I realise and switch to the other one the effect comes back.
Getting Oolong's and senchas with good theanine content is hard, specially finding one that works for you. Glutamate rich smell is a good indicator as well as the color or whiteish spots. Gyokuro or matcha is a safer source but if you only use that you get the tolerance thing too.
Yellow bag Lipton also works a little bit for me but not as effectively.
It gives you a calm focus. Sometimes (rarely) I realize I'm cranky for no reason after I respond to something with more emotion than it deserved, which isn't good on relationships. L-theanine works great for me to take the edge off.
I take 400mg before interviews when I'm job hunting. Unlike benzodiazepines, it doesn't seem to affect my problem solving ability at all. The effect is pretty mild compared to stronger anti-anxiety medication, but for me it seems to take my anxiety down a couple notches.
During a regular onsite interview, without l-theanine I might have some heart racing, and I might not be able to focus well enough to even understand what an interviewer is asking me. With l-theanine, the anxiety is still there but I can at least understand the problems I'm given.
There are lots of herbal teas that don't have caffeine already out there. What makes anything "tea" beyond putting some type of [dried, possibly ground-up] plant into a strainer in hot water, then drinking the result?
While “herbal tea” is indeed a very loosely used term, botanically speaking “tea” refers to the species camellia sinensis. Hongyacha is, to my knowledge, the only known case of a caffeine free camellia sinensis.
Tea in this context refers to drinks made out of a specific plant: Camellia Sinensis. Interestingly both black and green teas are made out of that very same plant. It's mostly the post-processing that make them either green, black, oolong, pu-erh, etc.
Just like there are different varieties of grapes more or less adequate to produce some kind of wines, there are different varieties of Camellia Sinensis. All varieties of Camellia Sinensis were thought to contain caffeine, until this specific variety was (re-)discovered.
Herbal teas are basically infusions of any plant that's not Camellia Sinensis.
The tea plant is camellia sinensis, so technically any tea not made with a plant of that species is not tea by the original definition. All the different kinds of tea are the same bush that is grown in different conditions, the leaves are harvested at different times and then processed in various ways. The significance here is that they have discovered a variant of the tea bush that is naturally caffeine free, while presumably retaining its other qualities and taste.
The word tea has been with us for about 4 centuries now, so it's no wonder it has taken meanings other than its original strict definition. Herbal tea would have been called a potion before the word tea was introduced.
Coffee makes me feel anxious, but the weird thing is that cola doesn't have this effect on me, even in large quantities, so it can't be the caffeine (I suppose; or cola could contain something that mitigates the bad effects of caffeine somehow).
Does anyone here have a similar experience? How can this be explained?
I remembered hearing that the caffeine used in soda came from the caffeine removed from coffee to make decaf, so I thought this was kind of strange since the source was the same. But I just went and actually looked it up and I guess it used to be true, but now primarily comes from Chinese pharmaceutical plants. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/03/13/289750754/wa...
Yeah, it's the same for me. Too much coffee, like just two cups, can give me a slight and distinct type of headache, but I can pop 600mg caffeine in pills or energy drinks without anything resembling the same effect.
For me, it's the type of coffee. Often supermarket-bought coffee that's dark roasted can cause this reaction in me. Maybe it's the pesticide, maybe it's the carcinogens from burning the coffee... I dunno.
I've mentioned this to a few others, and they can now also drink coffee. If they avoid such types. Perhaps try some fresh, lightly roasted, and organic coffee to start with. This way you avoid three possible causes.
Interesting side note, apparently the darker the roast, the less caffeine it has. Heat denatures the caffeine in the beans. People assume that dark, bitter coffee is "strong", but light roasts actually give the most pick-me-up.
Many psychoactive compounds have differing effects based on the speed at which they enter the brain. Perhaps you drink coffee quicker than soda, causing the concentration of caffeine in your brain to rise more quickly?
I am the same way. I decided to try caffeine in pill form, and it gives the the heightened awareness and increased productivity without the jitters and anxiety.
it's a very real physiological reaction to caffeine. I took some aspirin/caffeine tablets once for a headache.. i wasn't aware of the additional caffeine content (a few cups of coffee worth) , but was an anxious mess an entire night, heart racing, didn't sleep.
For me it's completely the other way around. Coke has always given me anxiety and palpitations, coffee just makes me feel good. Club Mate (mate tea) is somewhere in between, I used to feel jittery and almost sick from it but now it makes me feel great (however the high caffeine is noticeable).
Not quite newly discovered. The plant, camellia ptilophylla, has been studied for at least a couple of decades, e.g. see [1] [2]:
Cocoa tea (Camellia ptilophylla), which belongs to the genus Camellia,
is a naturally decaffeinated tea plant. For many years, it has been
widely consumed by local inhabitants in the Longmen area of Guangdong
Province of China but has only started attracting scientific interest
since 1988.
The tea is also called cocoa tea for the presence of theobromine, the same stuff you find in chocolate, about 10% by weight compared to about 0.35% in green tea.
[1] Effect of Dietary Cocoa Tea (Camellia ptilophylla) Supplementation on High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity, Hepatic Steatosis, and Hyperlipidemia in Mice: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2013/783860/
Given that caffeine is a natural insecticide[0] it will be interesting to see whether large-scale farming of this variety is possible without using artificial ones.
Well, since it's inside the plant instead of outside, it's less likely to wash into runoff. It's also presumably less toxic and carcinogenic to humans and to plants and animals that aren't pests.
Not that I think this is even vaguely a good idea.
Similar to what? The use of pest resistant GMOs has allowed farmers in some situations to dramatically reduce the amount of pesticide they apply, doing significantly less "damage" in general.
I went from drinking 2-3 cups of coffee everyday to stopping cold turkey 3 weeks ago. Big headache for ~48 hours but now feel fine. Biggest benefit for me is just feeling much less dehydrated - I don't think I was drinking nearly enough water to counter the diuretic effects of caffeine.
When I stop cold turkey I sleep a lot for a couple of weeks (10-13 hours per day), which is really useful when I'm stressed and cannot sleep. After the two weeks I behave normally again, but I never have the thought clarity that coffee gives me, so I end up going back and starting the cycle again.
I had the habit of taking several mugs of coffee per day. That helped a lot starting the day but had the side-effect of amplifying anxiety sometimes.
Today I mostly don't feel the need to drink coffee but I like to take a small cup of coffee with milk in the morning, it fulfills and is not addictive.
Maybe instead of banning coffee there can be a middle ground?
There are low caffeine varieties that can be bought just like there are high caffeine ones. Robusta tastes truely awful and has a lot more caffeine. Pure Arabica has considerably less and some varieties are weaker still. Combined with the fact that a lot of decaf is really “low caffeine”, natuarally low caffeine coffee is a a better choice I think.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_caffeine_coffee
I started roasting coffee years ago and something I learned early on is that, although dark roasted coffee has less caffeine, the difference between light and dark is practically negligible. Most people just interpret coffee being bold (as in, dark roast) as being strong, but in reality it's entirely flavor and not the caffeine content.
I love coffee, but have almost completely stopped drinking it. At one point in college, I was drinking around 3 12-cup pots of coffee per day & around 120 oz of coke (I only slept 10 hours total Monday thru Friday). About 2 years ago, I went cold turkey with caffeine. Coffee was exacerbating persistent heartburn. Also, the effect from caffeine was gone, was effectively immune. 20 years of heavy caffeine use...after 2 years mostly clean, I get jitters from a single cup of coffee.
The scientists behind this research called it "tea." The actual paper isn't clear on what the species is but it appears to be genus Camellia. The reason it has no caffeine is a mutation in the caffeine synthase gene, not a lack of any attempt at a caffeine-producing structure at all (as with brewing other plants' leaves).
If you need a caffeine-free alternative in the meantime, check out rooibos. It's not tea, biologically speaking, but it's a great approximation and it has a really nice red color.