"Michael Plant" > wrote
> Two aspirin were sufficient to clear my head
> Does my hoped for answer regarding
> caffeine and theophilline -- that the second steep contains little or none
> -- lie in the truth of your statements above? Is it really your
considered
> opinion that a few seconds of steep is sufficient to remove said elements?


Glad to have contributed to your cardiovascular health - all us mature
people should take aspirin every day, as well as plenty of tea.

It's frustrating, because I could answer the alkaloid question easily,
quantatively and definitively for a whole range of teas and brewing types in
about an hour - if I still worked in the lab! Caffeine/theophylline are
about as easy to analyze as anything could be. (The other stuff is harder,
partly because it's not all single, well-defined compounds, and partly
because there's much less of it.)

I'm going to hazard a guess that for most teas, a few minutes in tepid water
will take out most of the alkaloids and not much else. That five seconds in
hot water will take out 90% from anything. And that in fannings/dust and
even small broken-leaf blacks, with most of the taste in dried surface
exudates, only cold water will remove buzz w/o taking away too much flavor.

That's an informed guess, because it's what I do. Too much caffeine just
keeps me awake at night; I only have a cup every month or two, and have a
low tolerance. Theophylline OD makes me quite ill. So if I'm having more
than one mug of strong Assam or one pot of sencha, I'll wash out most of the
theophylline per above. Cold water seems to work pretty well, though I have
yet to try it on expensive oolongs.

I'll ask around and see if anyone I know, or a student at the local
technical college, will do an evening's HPLC analysis (I'd provide the
samples) for the price of a sushi dinner - or perhaps a good gong-fu pot and
an ounce of Dan Cong.

-DM