Oh, how I miss drinking tea everyday
Within the last year, on top of my Ulcerative Colitis I have been diagnosed with IBS. One of my IBS main triggers is caffeine. Due to this, I have not been able to drink tea like I once had.
I miss it. I miss discovering a new tea a day. I don’t get on here near as often anymore because of this and I feel like I have lost a fun part of my routine. It sucks. I’m trying to get into lower caffeine teas like herbals but, meh. I am a dark tea guy, through and through.
So, I guess I am writing this to say that is why I haven’t been as active on this site and that I miss discussing teas with all of you. Now, go forth and drink a dark brew, high caffeine tea for me!
You might give a Japanese green tea called Hojicha a try. It is very low caffeine almost decaf because of the roasting process and the tendency for them to use a certain amount of stems in it.
Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. Hope it gets treated soon so you can resume drinking tea. But you do have options in the meantime.
If caffeine isn’t completely off limits, then hojicha is a good low caffeine option as Allan pointed. Some roasted oolongs like mi lan xiang are also low in caffeine. Mei Leaf did a good video on caffeine levels in tea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7jQ1uFoJXY
Verdant has quite a few herbal teas similar in taste to the real thing. I’ve only tried the wild laoshan gan zao ye – which tasted a lot like regular laoshan green tea – but I’ve heard good things about their crassicolumna faux sheng teas.
I tried both the crassicolumna sheng and black tea varient, I liked the sheng, didn’t like the black tea. For your information crassicolumna is a close relative of the tea plant that has no caffeine. I have only seen it at Verdant.
For whatever reason I can drink most raw puerh off and on all day. Any other tea, green, black, oolong, etc. I have to drink sparingly. I do not have IBS, so I have no idea how puerh would effect you. Just mentioning how my body reacts the the caffeine content. Good luck with your quest. :)
Have you considered visiting a chiropractor? I went to see mine for back/hip issues and she’s been able to address all sorts of things that I didn’t realize were related. And some of them are digestive issues.
Sorry to hear about those problems. I’m not sure if this website or person is familiar; there might be some content there that’s helpful:
https://theemptystomach.com/category/ibs/
Related to caffeine in tea, people say all sorts of different versions are a lot lower but hojicha is the only variation I tend to accept that for.
But then it’s made mostly from stems, it’s not exactly the same thing. This post goes into one study measuring amounts in different tea versions (black and green, mostly, and one hojicha), and background factors. I don’t think it would help since it only points out variations but no quick-fix for a type, but it might be worth a read:
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2017/06/caffeine-in-tea-revisited.html
I like tisanes but I get it about them being completely a different thing. If you could find a version that can oxidize like tea, something similar to tea, it really might seem more like it, and maybe that was already mentioned in the one comment. Teaberry leaves as a tisane might be promising, if you happen to know of it growing around where you are. I’ve ran across the idea it makes a nice tisane (used by native Americans), and that it can oxidize (but I’m not sure how similar it would turn out), since it’s also a non-pine evergreen plant.
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