How much caffeine in 8 grams of dried tea leaves?

[Dominique]

I rely primarily on tea for reaching my water drinking goal. With about 8 grams of tea leaves (I rotate between 6-8 varieties, green/black/white, plain/flavoured):

I make 3 teapots of 1 liter each. I let it brew for 3-5 minutes. I’ve been trying to determine how much caffeine I’m getting per liter of tea. Any take on that? Or would that be too low in order to matter? I have no problem falling asleep. I try to stop drinking at least 4-5 hours before bedtime, primarily to reduce the need for trips to the bathroom at night (that’s your fate when you’re a 50-someting guy with a growing prostate!).

[GershonSurge]

If you Google it with the brand name, you will probably find an answer.

[shipo]

@Dominique, there are a few other variables than just the amount of caffeine in the tea leaves; the two most important are:

1. How much fermentation have the tea leaves been subject to (white tea virtually none, black tea quite a bit)?
2. How many steepings per group of tea leaves?

Following my work stints in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I discovered several Formosa Oolongs to be very delightful teas with a caffeine concentration (first steeping) of about a tenth of coffee.  For the second steeping the caffeine is about a tenth of the first, and for the third and fourth steeping there is virtually no caffeine at all.

For my part, I am highly reactive to caffeine (I drank a half-cup of coffee once in 1982 and my hands (and to a lesser degree my body) shook for over eight hours.  Like you I get an easy 90% of my daily fluid intake from tea, I typically drink between six and eight liters of Oolong tea per day, right up until heading for bed, and never have any caffeine related issues.

[Dominique]

Thanks, @shipo! It does make sense the amount of caffeine drops very sharply after the 2nd and 3rd steeping. Since my sleep doesn’t seem to be affected, I’ll assume the total amount of caffeine I’m consuming from tea is very small.

And thanks also for mentioning Oolong, this gave me the idea to add it to my selection of teas:

This was the most expensive I’ve been buying so far, btw!

[shipo]

Yeah, that's the problem with the nicer Oolongs (I like Spring Dragon and Tung-Ting Jade), and here in the States they are typically anywhere from $150-$250 per kilogram.  That said, I typically only consume two to three kilograms of Oolong per year, so compared to Starbucks, it is really cheap.  🙂