Decaf loose-leaf black tea suggestions?
I’ve started drinking tea at night more and more often and have unfortunately used up all of my decaf teas! The decaf blends that I drank before were all bagged, and now I’m looking for some high quality loose leaf black teas. Straight unflavored blacks would be perfect, especially Assams, Ceylons, Earl Greys, or Kenyan teas.
Any suggestions?
The Decaffeinated from Harney and Sons has a lot of flavor, a LOT, as do their decaf versions of peach and Paris. I didn’t care for the decaf Assam, however. A Southern Season has a great decaf Ceylon, too.
There’s a brand Barry’s that makes a decaf that’s quite flavorful, although it is in teabags (I prefer loose myself, but was surprised by this one.) When living in Grenada I used to get PG Tips decaf because it had a strong flavor as well, but alas, it’s just not as good in the US.
http://www.zentealife.com/collections/black-tea/products/ceylon-decaf
I don’t know much (or anything) about decaf black teas, but this one that I have tried was pretty close to a normal Ceylon. When looking for a decaf, make sure you look for how it was decaffeinated. The CO2 method is the safest. You probably wouldn’t want a tea that was decaffeinated with chlorine.
I dream of finding the perfect decaf black (AKA you can’t tell it isn’t high-octane Assam). Haven’t found it, but Single Origin Teas has a very decent decaf Ceylon that’ll get you by.
Milwaukee brewing company makes a beer steeped with rishi tea. I don’t think its decaf, but the 9%abv will counteract, and you will be fine.
My dad asked for decaf earl grey for Christmas, so I did a bit of looking at the reviews on this site and Amazon. Harney and Sons Earl Grey had the most flavor to me. Rishi Earl Grey had good reviews on Amazon, as did Twinnings Irish Breakfast (I thought this tasted pretty weak). Have you thought of Hojicha which typically has less caffiene than black tea?
Has anyone tried the “at-home” method of doing an initial steep of about 30 seconds, dumping that, and then using new water to brew your tea? I’ve read that it works to get rid of most of the caffeine but doesn’t impact the flavor. I just have never tried it.
It doesn’t work. Somehow it floats around as fact, but basically to remove the caffeine, you need to remove the tea. 10+ minutes steep, and it’s still not as effective as people tend to think.
Another common caffeine myth is that black tea has the most, so you can drink white, green, oolong, etc. for less caffeine. In many cases, this is false. Consider all tea to be caffeinated if it has camelia sinensis. :)
Uniquity, that’s kind of what I suspected. As far as caffeine amounts, I know it totally depends on every little growing and processing condition, so I don’t rely on anything except what it may say on the package. And I just don’t like most purely herbal teas as much as real tea. :(
The 30 second steep will get rid of only 10-20% of caffiene. You would actually need to steep tea 10-15 minutes to remove most of the caffiene.
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