---
title: 'Caffeine in tea and in the cup'
url: 'https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/caffeine'
markdown: 'https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/caffeine.md'
lang: en
date: '2026-10-25'
description: 'How much caffeine tea leaf holds and how much reaches the cup: the role of cultivar and plucking, heat and time, and why a rinse removes so little.'
---

# Caffeine in tea and in the cup 咖啡碱

 Editors · October 25, 2026 · 10 min read

Tea leaf is 2–5% caffeine by dry weight, but only part of it reaches the cup. How much depends on leaf dose, water temperature, steeping time and the number of infusions, not on the color of the tea.

 ![Two cups of green and black tea, each with its dry leaf in front](https://howtotea.me/images/c/o/v/e/r/cover-95c6b2a6.webp) Illustration 

咖啡碱

Caffeine

kāfēijiǎn

 In dry leaf: 2–5% caffeine by weight

Highest in: the bud and first leaf

In the cup: 4–14 mg (2 g/200 ml, 80 °C, 2 min)

A 30-second rinse: about 9%, an estimate

Three infusions of one leaf: 69%, 23% and 8% of the total

When people talk about caffeine in tea, they almost always mean the cup: will it keep me awake, can I drink it in the evening? But caffeine in the leaf and caffeine in the cup are two different numbers. The leaf holds a reserve, and the cup gets whatever the water has time to pull out. The bush and the plucking determine the reserve. How much of it ends up in your cup is up to you.

## How much caffeine is in the leaf

Caffeine is the chief of the three purine alkaloids in tea leaf. The other two, theobromine and theophylline, are present at levels tens to thousands of times lower: about 0.05% and 0.002% of dry weight, against 2–4% for caffeine, according to a 2001 review. Caffeine tastes bitter, dissolves readily in hot water and ranks among the main flavor compounds in the liquor.

The Taiwan Tea Research and Extension Station gives an overall range of 2–5% of dry weight. Most retail tea is around 3%. Georgian and [Turkish tea](https://howtotea.me/traditions/middle-east-and-central-asia/turkey) made from old leaf of seed-grown bushes can be as low as 1–1.5%, and fine plucking from African clones as high as 5–6%. These figures come from the tea expert Nigel Melican, and they agree with the Taiwanese data.

Caffeine is spread unevenly through the shoot. Measurements on the Jianghua Kucha cultivar found the most in the first leaf (39 mg/g) and the bud (37 mg/g), with 28 mg/g in the fourth leaf and 21 mg/g in the young stem. Earlier work on [Longjing](https://howtotea.me/teas/green/longjing) 43 and Tieguanyin put the peak in the bud. For a buyer, that means the finer the plucking, the more caffeine per gram of leaf.

## What decides it: bush and plucking, not color

Tea type has little to do with caffeine. Green and [black tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/black) made from the same raw leaf differ by about 0.3 percentage points. Differences between cultivars, clones and seasons are many times larger. Assamica leaf has up to a third more than sinensis, and clonal plantings up to twice as much as seed-grown ones. Heavy nitrogen fertilizer and fast growth raise the level.

Season is less clear-cut. According to Taiwanese data, summer and autumn plucks are richer than spring and winter ones. Melican, by contrast, counts autumn among the conditions for the lowest caffeine (citing Georgia and Turkey). There is no single rule, and a seller's figure for a particular batch is only a rough guide, since caffeine in a single clone varied more than twofold over a year.

Shade matters too. After 26 days under 95% shade netting, the leaves had twice the caffeine and nearly four times the theanine. That explains why Japanese [gyokuro](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/sencha-gyokuro) and [matcha](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/matcha) are high in caffeine: growers shade the bushes for sweetness, and the caffeine comes along with it.

Processing changes it little. In experiments on a single batch of raw leaf, caffeine shifted by tenths of a percent across different withering regimes and dropped slightly with long oxidation.

White tea and caffeine

The claim that [white tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/white) has almost no caffeine does not hold up against measurements. White tea made from buds uses some of the most caffeine-rich parts of the shoot. In the Brazilian sample it measured 21.5–31.0 mg/g, against 18.3–25.3 for green and 14.3–34.8 for black. The lowest leaf values were in Taiwanese [oolongs](https://howtotea.me/teas/oolong) (23.8 and 28.8 mg/g in one study), and even those are far from caffeine-free.

## How much reaches the cup

Only part of the caffeine makes it into the liquor. A single five-minute infusion in boiling water extracts 51.5–85.2% of the leaf's caffeine, depending on particle size. The rest stays in the wet leaf.

**Time.** Caffeine comes out quickly, though not instantly. For boiling water, an estimate based on Hicks and colleagues runs like this: half a minute, about 9%; one minute, 18%; two, 34%; three, 48%; five, 69%; ten, 92%; fifteen, practically all. This is Melican's extrapolation from data points at 5, 10 and 15 minutes rather than a direct measurement at short times, so treat the numbers as approximate.

**Temperature.** Boiling water extracts at least twice as much as water at 80 °C. That held for all six Taiwanese samples (3 g in 150 ml, 5–6 minutes). Oolong brewed for two minutes gave 4 mg per 200 ml at 80 °C and 14 mg at 100 °C. Only for oolong was the difference statistically significant; the other types showed the same trend, but weaker.

**Infusions.** Most of the caffeine leaves the leaf in the first few infusions. Three five-minute infusions of the same leaf yielded 69%, 23% and 8% of the total extracted[1](#fn:1). With Fujian white tea brewed to a standard tasting protocol, the first infusion took 37% of the leaf's caffeine and three infusions took 79%. Caffeine comes out faster than [catechins](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/polyphenols): after three infusions, less than half the catechins had been extracted. That is why the flavor stays full long after the caffeine in the cup has dropped. For how temperature and time fit in, see [the physics of extraction](https://howtotea.me/science/water-and-extraction/extraction).

A few measured cups for comparison:

| Method and parameters | Caffeine in the cup |
|---|---|
| 2 g in 200 ml, 80 °C, 2 min | oolong 4 mg, white 5.8, green 11, [pu-erh](https://howtotea.me/teas/dark/puer) 13, yellow 13.8, black 14[2](#fn:2) |
| same, up to 10 min and 100 °C | peaks by type 27–53 mg |
| Sencha, 10 g in 430 ml, 90 °C, 1 min | 20 mg/100 ml |
| Gyokuro, 10 g in 60 ml, 60 °C, 2.5 min | 160 mg/100 ml |
| Genmaicha, 15 g in 650 ml, 90 °C, 30 s | 10 mg/100 ml |
| Black tea, 5 g in 360 ml, boiling, 1.5–4 min | 30 mg/100 ml |
| Matcha, 1.5 g powder in 70 ml | 48 mg per cup |

As the table shows, a "mg per cup" figure means nothing without the leaf dose, volume, temperature and time. Gyokuro comes out on top because it is brewed so strong, 10 g in 60 ml, rather than because of some special leaf. Genmaicha has half the caffeine of sencha because it is cut with rice.

## A rinse does not remove caffeine

The most persistent myth holds that pouring off the first infusion gets rid of 80% of the caffeine. In reality, 30 seconds in boiling water releases about 9%. Even under harsh lab conditions (fine leaf, constant stirring), only 20% came out in half a minute. Removing 80% would take more than five minutes of steeping.

America's Test Kitchen reached the same result in a lab test of second infusions brewed after a first infusion of several minutes. Second infusions of white, green and oolong were not significantly lower in caffeine, and for green and oolong they were even higher. Only black tea (40% lower) and third infusions, which already taste thin, had noticeably less. Tightly rolled oolong opens slowly, so its second infusion can carry more caffeine than the first.

So what is a rinse for? In China it is called "waking the tea" (醒茶). Hot water warms and opens the leaf and clears the [storage](https://howtotea.me/brewing/basics/storage) smell from dense oolongs and aged teas (see [preheating and rinsing](https://howtotea.me/brewing/basics/preheating-and-rinsing)). It is not a way to cut caffeine.

## How to get less caffeine in the cup

What works is changing the leaf and the brew, not the ritual.

1. **Raw material.** Choose mature leaf over buds and first flush. Shaded teas (gyokuro, matcha) have more.
2. **Temperature.** Water at 80 °C instead of boiling extracts roughly half as much.
3. **Leaf dose.** Less leaf in the same volume means proportionally less caffeine.
4. **Infusions.** The first infusions carry the most caffeine: at 85–100 °C the peak comes in the first, at 70 °C in the second. Do not drink them one after another.
5. **Cold brew.** Three [cold infusions](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/cold-brew) (3 g in 150 ml, 4 °C, 2 and 4 hours) together gave less caffeine than a single hot one.
6. **Decaffeinated tea.** The Chinese standard allows up to 0.6% caffeine, so it is not zero. Some plants are naturally free of it: in cocoa tea (Camellia ptilophylla) the main alkaloid is theobromine.

Honest measurements for gongfu are scarce. The dose is 5–8 g in 80–110 ml, and no study gives full per-cup data comparable to the table above. A rough calculation, not a measurement: 7 g of leaf at 2–5% caffeine contains 140–350 mg, and over a long session most of it ends up in the liquor. In a study of Bingdao sheng pu-erh over 14 infusions, caffeine in the liquor had fallen by 40% after the seventh, and the best flavor came in infusions 3–7. If you drink [gongfu](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/gongfu-cha) for a long time, count the whole session, not a single small cup.

## Tea, coffee and the guidelines

Gram for gram of dry material, tea and roasted coffee beans are comparable in caffeine. The difference in the cup comes from the dose: about 0.75 g of leaf goes into 100 ml of tea, and far more ground coffee into a cup of coffee. The US FDA lists 37 mg of caffeine for 12 ounces (about 355 ml) of [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green), 71 mg for black and 113–247 mg for coffee. According to the Japanese food composition table, coffee (10 g in 150 ml) has 60 mg/100 ml. That is three times as much as sencha and twice as much as black tea, while gyokuro has 2.7 times more.

Caffeine in tea and caffeine in coffee are the same substance. "Theine" is an old name: Oudry isolated it from tea in 1827, and in 1838 Jobst and Mulder showed that its composition matches caffeine. The body treats natural caffeine from tea or coffee and added caffeine the same way.

For what counts as a safe amount, go by the official figures. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA, 2015) considers single doses of up to 200 mg, and up to 400 mg a day, safe for healthy adults; 100 mg shortly before bed may disturb sleep; for pregnant women the limit is 200 mg a day[3](#fn:3). These figures cover caffeine from all sources. For everything else that ends up in the cup, see [tea safety](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/tea-safety).

Tea's "gentler" effect is usually put down to caffeine arriving together with [theanine](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry/theanine). The experiments, though, used doses above what tea provides, such as 50 mg of caffeine with 100 mg of theanine, or 150 mg with 250 mg. Tea has roughly twice as much caffeine as theanine. The idea that caffeine from tea is absorbed more gently remains Melican's hypothesis, with no absorption measurements behind it.

## Common questions

Is it true that white tea has almost no caffeine?

No. White tea is made from buds and first leaves, and those have the most caffeine. A Brazilian survey found 21.5–31.0 mg/g of dry leaf in white tea, no less than in green or black. Under one brewing regime (80 °C, 2 minutes) white came out lower than black, but with longer steeping it caught up.

Does the first rinse remove the caffeine?

Hardly. By an estimate based on data from Hicks and colleagues, 30 seconds in boiling water releases about 9% of the leaf's caffeine. Removing 80% would take more than five minutes of steeping. A rinse is for waking the leaf up, not for removing caffeine.

How do I get less caffeine in the cup?

Choose mature leaf over buds, brew with water around 80 °C instead of boiling, use less leaf per cup, and do not drink the first infusions back to back. Cold brew also yields less. No tea is truly caffeine-free, except cocoa tea, which has theobromine instead.

Notes

1. Hicks M. B., Hsieh Y.-H. P., Bell L. N. Tea preparation and its influence on methylxanthine concentration. Food Research International 29, 1996, 325–330. [doi.org/10.1016/0963-9969(96)00038-5](https://doi.org/10.1016/0963-9969(96)00038-5) [↩](#fnref1:1)
2. Ayakdaş G., Ağagündüz D. Determination of L-Theanine and Caffeine Contents in Tea Infusions. Foods 14 (13), 2313, 2025. [mdpi.com/2304-8158/14/13/2313](https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/14/13/2313) [↩](#fnref1:2)
3. EFSA NDA Panel. Scientific Opinion on the safety of caffeine. EFSA Journal 13 (5), 4102, 2015. [doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4102](https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4102) [↩](#fnref1:3)

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- Parent: [Tea leaf chemistry](https://howtotea.me/science/chemistry.md)
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