Originally Posted by
LABARINTH
yeah but I am willing to bet that after the first few minutes you are 90% of the way there. I read the same thing once but it was about reducing the caffeine.
nope not really. The article we read is probably the same except the wordage they used was confusing. They were assuming you would throw the first batch of tea away. And 90% of the tea was removed at about 10 minutes.
In summary: Hicks et al measured the caffeine (plus theobromine) content of six different teas (three bagged and three loose-leaf, including black, oolong and green types). They measured caffeine-extraction in boiling water when steeped for 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes. They replicated all their extractions three times to eliminate experimental error. Extrapolation of their data gives the following caffeine-extraction percentages below 5 minutes (averaged over all tea types and formats); note that while loose tea extracted marginally more slowly than tea-bag tea, it made only a couple of percentage-points' difference:
30 seconds: 9% caffeine removal
1 minute: 18% caffeine removal
2 minutes: 34% caffeine removal
3 minutes: 48% caffeine removal
4 minutes: 60% caffeine removal
5 minutes: 69% caffeine removal
10 minutes: 92% caffeine removal
15 minutes: 100% caffeine removal