Caffeine – How much is in tea?

Caffeine – How much is in tea?

This is actually a hard question to answer as many things affect the amount of caffeine in your cup of tea. Things such as type of tea, steeping time, ratio of water-to-leaves, age of the leaves, and even size of your mug affect the amount of caffeine you will consume. But all tea from the Camellia sinensis plant contains caffeine. What might be more important are the descriptions found on tea packages: high in caffeine, moderate caffeine, low in caffeine, decaffeinated, and no caffeine. For reference an 8-ounce cup of coffee can have 95-165 mg of caffeine

Let’s start with the easiest – no caffeine. This simply means the tisane or flavored tea you are drinking is made of ingredients that contain no caffeine. Products marked as such can be consumed by those who do not wish to drink caffeine.

Next is decaffeinated tea which resembles decaffeinated coffee. The tea still contains a small amount of caffeine even after processing to remove caffeine. But the amount remaining is small – no more than 5-10 mg per 8-ounce cup. But it can be even less.

Now what about low-in-caffeine tea? How is that different from decaffeinated tea? First off, there is no extra processing to remove caffeine. The tea has lower caffeine amounts than other varieties of tea. White teas have around 20 mg of caffeine with green teas having 30-50 mg per 8-ounce cup. That’s still less than half the caffeine found in coffee.

Moderate caffeine is the hardest to describe. Based on many factors such as harvest time, growing practices, processing methods, water temperature, and steep time; these teas have an average amount of caffeine less than 50 mg per 8-ounce cup.

And lastly is highly caffeinated teas. This is actually a very wide range, but teas with over 50 mg of caffeine per 8-ounce cup are considered highly caffeinated. Most black teas with standard preparation are considered highly caffeinated even though they are still significantly less than a cup of coffee.

It’s still important to know your tea though. Some matchas can be prepared to have at least 250 mg of caffeine. And there are teas that have over 120 mg of caffeine per serving. But these are not every day teas and will carry warnings of caffeine levels.

So the main take away is to know that descriptions of caffeine levels in tea are descriptions compared to other teas. Not coffee, sodas, or energy drinks.