Does green tea contain caffeine?
Green tea lovers reach for it for all sorts of reasons. Some are looking for a coffee alternative, while others want a caffeine-free drink. Does green tea contain caffeine?
Yes, although… not all of it! In our own office, almost nobody drinks coffee any more – we love the taste of tea, and we get our energy boost from matcha. And anyone trying to avoid caffeine altogether isn't left out either – they can reach for delicious low-caffeine green teas like hojicha and kukicha. Sounds a bit complicated? We'll explain everything in the article below.
Green tea and caffeine
Theine and caffeine are, in fact, the very same substance. Caffeine goes by different names depending on where it's found. The caffeine found in guarana fruit and seeds, for instance, is known as "guaranine". The version found in yerba mate – the dried, ground leaves of the Paraguayan holly plant, used to make a tea-like infusion – is known as "mateine". And theine is simply the name for the caffeine found in the leaves of the tea plant.
Does green tea contain caffeine? Yes – green tea naturally contains caffeine. But how much is actually in a cup of green tea? Is it enough to give you that boost of energy and improved focus? The short answer is: yes. The longer answer is: it depends on the type of green tea. There are many varieties of green tea, each with its own distinct properties, flavour, colour of infusion, and nutrient content – including, of course, caffeine.
Which green tea has the strongest energising effect?
Matcha is clearly the front-runner among green teas when it comes to nutrient content, especially caffeine.
Matcha is made from green tea leaves ground into an extremely fine powder, grown in the shade under bamboo mats. This shading method forces the tea bushes to produce more chlorophyll. Because it's consumed as a powder, you take in the whole tea leaf, which means you absorb the full range of compounds found in the tea bush – including its energising caffeine.
Caffeine-free green tea?
For anyone who prefers traditional leaf teas, those looking for an energy boost are usually recommended sencha, which is rich in caffeine and helps speed up the metabolism. Its high caffeine content comes from the early harvest during which its leaves are picked. Slightly milder, though still noticeable, is the energising effect of bancha, a Japanese green tea. Genmaicha has a similar effect, with a caffeine content lower than sencha's thanks to the addition of roasted rice, which also gives it its characteristic buttery flavour.
For anyone who shouldn't consume caffeine, or simply wants to avoid it for other reasons, kukicha and hojicha are the ideal choice. Kukicha is a tea made from dried green tea twigs rather than traditional leaves, giving it a very low theine content. Hojicha, meanwhile, is a tea where one of the key steps in production is roasting the leaves, which gives it its distinctive taste and aroma. What's more, this roasting process not only gives it its unusual smoky aroma but also results in an almost complete loss of caffeine.
