In the previous post I talked about the health and acne-fighting benefits of green tea. In this article I’m going to show you how to hack your tea so that you can get 5 times more antioxidants from the same cup of tea.
This article we are going to get a little geeky. That is how to choose and prepare your tea for maximum flavonoid content. We are going to compare different varieties and types of teas for their ECGC content, and explore how brewing time and temperature affects the antioxidant potential. It’s gonna be geeky, but it’s also going to be fun J.
How much ECGC in a cup of green tea
In the previous post about green tea I talked about the catechin called ECGC. Many studies used therapeutic dosages of 300 to 1000mg per day. And that’s nice to know but not very practical. What we are interested is how many cups of green tea one should drink.
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Read moreThe USDA in their 2007 report analyzed the flavonoid content of nearly 400 food items and they also reported EGCG content. I dug through the report and came up with the following figures of EGCG content in different teas per cup.
- Brewed green tea: 180mg
- Brewed green tea, decaffeinated: 60mg
- Brewed green tea, flavored: 45mg
- Ready-to-drink green tea: 10mg
- Brewed oolong tea: 80mg
- Brewed black tea: 20mg
The above figures are mean values from the report. There was a considerable variation for each of those groups, for example brewed green tea values varied from 5mg to 460mg per cup. Soil quality, growing condition, leaf age and other factors affect the flavonoid and ECGC content of teas, hence the large variation in measured levels. Similarly the type of brewed tea (tea bag, loose leaf or powder) affects ECGC content, as we’ll discuss a bit later.
We can also see this when we compare brewed green tea to flavored and ready-to-drink varieties. Those often use lower quality tea leaves and that’s reflected in their ECGC content. Decaffeination process removes some EGCG along with the caffeine, and that’s why decaffeinated varieties have 2/3 les ECGC.
Brewing conditions
How you brew the tea also makes a difference on the ECGC content and antioxidant potential of your cup of tea. In this bit we’ll focus on water temperature and brewing time.
Note that some of the figures in this chapter don’t quite match up with the figures reported by USDA. I don’t really know why. But don’t get hung up on the numbers, rather look at the trends and the overall picture.
Brewing temperature
This figure shows the effect brewing water temperature has to ECGC and polyphenol content of tea.
The take-away message is that the hotter the water the more antioxidant you can expect your tea to have. Note that the EGCG extraction is particularly sensitive to water temperature (the line with solid circle markers). Brewing in 80 degrees Celsius means you get only about 60% of the ECGC from the tea leaf.
Brewing time
The following chart is quite interesting. Let’s first focus on the brewing time and how it affects ECGC content.
To get to these figures researchers brewed tea at 100 degrees Celsius for 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 5 minutes. Tea was used at typical tea bag concentrations, i.e. 1g of tea leaves per 100ml of water.
As is plainly obvious the longer your brew the tea the more you get out of it. The optimal time seems to be about 3 to 4 minutes in boiling water. The only exception is powdered green tea where brewing time doesn’t matter so much. Powdered tea seems to give out it’s antioxidants much faster than other forms of tea.
Type of green tea
If you look at the previous chart again you’ll see three forms of green tea: Tea leaves (means loose leaf tea), powdered and tea bag. You’ll also see that when you make tea using tea bags you’ll get significantly less ECGC than from loose leaf and powdered teas. The authors speculated that this could be because the tea bag itself prevents some ECGC from being absorbed. Or, more likely, that tea bags contain lower quality leaves.
White vs. green tea
Some people claim that white tea is even healthier than green tea. Unfortunately there’s no good definition of what white tea means and most studies don’t even mention white tea as separate category. I did found a few studies that compared black, green and white. In this study white and green tea had very similar ECGC and flavonoid levels.
Interestingly one study noted that white tea had almost double the caffeine content of green tea.
To milk or not to milk
Some people like to add a touch of milk to their tea. Some papers noted that there’s debate in the scientific community about whether adding milk takes away some of the health benefits of tea. Some say that adding milk may reduce the antioxidant potential. Some say it has no effect.
Get 5 times more out of your tea
If you are anything like me you can get much more out of your tea by following these tips. Before I wrote this article I did everything exactly the worst way, the lazy way. I used tea bags (cos they are easy), and brewed my tea for no more than a minute in less than boiling water.
So let’s see what happens when we go from that to using high quality loose lead tea and brewing it in boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes. A quick calculation from the charts above shows that the ECGC content and antioxidant potential of my cup of tea just multiplied by 3 to 5 times.
Take-home messages
Type and quality of tea and how you brew it affect the antioxidant potential of your cup of tea. Here’s how to get most out of your cup:
- Choose a high quality tea. Avoid mass market brands and choose a specialist brand from Japan or China.
- Choose either powdered or loose lead green tea.
- Brew your tea in boiling hot water for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Whether you choose green or white tea doesn’t matter – they both have similar antioxidant potential and ECGC levels.
- Don’t put milk into your tea as it potentially diminishes some of the antioxidant value.
Just by following these tips you can get 3 to 5 times more ECGC from the same amount of tea.
Toggle references
- US Department of Agriculture. USDA Database for the Flavanoids Content of Selected Foods Release 2.1. (PDF)
- Factors affecting the levels of catechins and caffeine in tea beverage: estimated daily intakes and antioxidant activity. (PDF)
- Characterisation of white tea – Comparison to green and black tea. (PDF)
- HPLC determination of catechins and caffeine in tea. Differentiation of green, black and instant teas. (PDF)
- Total Phenol, Catechin, and Caffeine Contents of Teas Commonly Consumed in the United Kingdom. (PDF)
- White and green teas (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis): variation in phenolic, methylxanthine, and antioxidant profiles.
- The effect of green, black and white tea on the level of alpha and gamma tocopherols in free radical-induced oxidative damage of human red blood cells.
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Interesting, I’ve always read you shouldn’t use boiling hot water for green tea, mainly because the tea’s supposed to taste bitter afterwards and/or “the good stuff” (vitamins etc.) would get destroyed.
However, I’m going to try it with boily water from now on.
Stella, that’s what I used to also think. I was quite surprised when those studies showed that higher temperatures lead to quite significantly higher antioxidant potential. I didn’t post that image, but one of the studies had a chart showing antioxidant potential of a cup of tea and how it varied based on extraction temperature, length and solvent. Higher temperature and longer time lead to higher antioxidant potential.
Hey Seppo,
Thanks for explaining this!
What type or bramd of green tea do you recommend? I have been doing the bag tea, so ill have to try the powder..
Also i had read that the caffeine in tea is not good for acne.? So i had stopped using it for a while and it will also keep me awake at night.. Do you have this problem with it
More than 3 cups serms a little harsh to me on the kidneys to filter all of this?
It’s hard for me to recommend any specific brands given that I live in Thailand. As a general guideline I would go with either looseleaf or powder teas from a speciality brand. So not Lipton or other big tea makers. Some speciality green tea brand from Japan is what I would go with (and what I have here). They are more expensive, but price per cup is still quite low.
What you want is tea that’s green after brewing. Like you see on this page. You’ll probably get very high quality tea from that site, but I don’t have any experience so I can’t recommend it.
Another thing I discovered just recently. High quality green tea will oxidize and change color if you let it sit for too long. It will actually turn dark yellow to almost brown. I had this happen to me the first time I made my new loose leaf tea. I had powdered tea before and that never turned brown. So maybe the powdered tea was not so high quality and green came from food color, I don’t know. So you’ll have to drink the tea within 2 to 3 hours of brewing. Otherwise the antioxidants start to oxidize and you’ll lose the health benefits.
As to caffeine. Green tea doesn’t have that much. When you look at actual medical research (not fear mongering from alt-med people) there’s no real harm from drinking moderate amounts of coffee. Green tea has even less caffeine. Caffeine is not a problem for me as I drink 3 to 4 cups of coffee per day. So I’m used to it.
I’m trying to help my son, his acne is getting worst. HIs older brother is now at a point that it’s managable. What’s the best way to brew this tea without the tea bags? Any suggestions, I’m new at this.
Patricia, I normally just boil some water and pour it over loose leaf tea. You might get a bit better results if you dump the leaves into boiling water and keep the heat on for 3 minutes. The way I do it the water cools a bit during the time it takes for tea to brew.
You probably know this already, but you can’t use tea bag tea for this. You need to buy loose leaf tea, it’s usually mentioned in the packaging.
Thank you for a very interesting article, all the facts were very surprising to me. But it made me think, can an steel brewing sifter (sorry, probably not using the correct expression) harm the antioxidants in tea? Coz then it might be another point where I do wrong….?
Petusha, I’m sorry but I don’t know that. I really have no idea whether steel would cause more damage to antioxidants in tea.
HI, VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT THE GREEN TEA.
I LOVE DRINKING HOT TEA, BUT I DONT DO IT OFTEN. I HAVE A VERY PRONE ACNE SKIN SINCE I WAS 15 I THINK, NO IM 26 IMAGINE HOW HARD ITS FOR ME TO DEAL WITH THIS ACNE THING. SOMETIMES IT GETS OK AND SOMETIMES ITS JUST OUT OF CONTROL AND MY SKY JUST BREAKS OUT LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW, IT REALLY AFFECTS ME.
THANKS BOUT THE ADVICE I WILL START BUYING THE GREEN TEA AND SEE HOW IT GOES. IM REALLY TIRED OF DOING ALL KINDS OF STUFF TO MAKE IT STOP BUT NOTHING HELP.
I HOPE THIS REMEDY HELPS ME, I HAVE. I THINK I FOUND THE BEST SITE AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF SUFFERING!!!
Great article. I love the study about brewing times and temperatures, there’s a lot of misinformation about that on the net. Thanks for clearing that up.
I would add one tip: add a squirt of ascorbic acid (vitamin C, probably from a lemon or lime). This will help with absorption of catechins.
Here’s the citation for that:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996909002634
I write more here:
http://www.loveandfreedomproject.com/how-green-tea-made-me-superhuman/
Interesting blog Andrew, especially like the clean design
I covered catechin bioavailability and shelf-life in my other tea hacking post. In that post I mentioned the study you linked (and a few more). Unfortunately a squirt of lemon or lime won’t do much. You need about 50 mg of vit C per cup – far more than you would get from a lemon. For example a cup of lemon juice has about 112 mg of vit C. I use powdered vitamin C. Just a little tip of a teaspoon is enough. Powdered vit C is dirt cheap, I think I paid $10 for the bottle that lasts for 2 to 3 years
Interesting article, Seppo.
You’re hacking tea for EGCG content but unfortunately, you’re casting taste aside. The reason some green teas aren’t brewed in boiling water is precisely to diminish catechin (includes EGCG) and caffeine content, so that it’s not so astringent and bitter.
Delicate Japanese green teas like shincha and gyokuro are brewed at even lower temperatures, with the goal of suppressing catechin and caffeine while maximizing amino acids (includes L-theanine) for a sweet, brothy flavor.
Another alternative to get the full amount of EGCG is to drink powdered tea, that way you are consuming the leaf as a whole, as is the case with matcha.
Thanks for your comment, Ricardo.
Yeah, I figured that this will affect the taste. I’m sure Japanese tea masters are turning in their grave for this (and the other tea hacking) article.
I’m mostly interested in the health effects of green tea. The taste is acceptable to me. Yes, it’s a bit more bitter than normally, but I don’t find it unpleasant. I mostly drink iced green tea anyway.