Comment · Fri, December 7, 2012 · Ceretropic
Best kind of tea for nootropics purposes?
Original post in this thread
1man_factory · 12 points
I'm a bit of a tea geek and I'm interested in their nootropics potential, whatever it may be.
Now I know that the EGCG in green tea may have some beneficial cognitive effects (and there may be other things in green tea that are good for that purpose as well), but black tea has significantly more l-theanine (google: l-theanine content of black tea).
So is the winner Oolong, or one of the two? Or hell, maybe even white tea is the best choice, it's supposed to have the highest caffeine content of any variety.
What they were answering
1man_factory · 2 points
http://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/z8svg/how_much_caffeine_is_actually_in_a_cup_of_white/
It's not that simple (even more complicated than I thought when I posted this thread!)
But yes, there are definitely some useful tisanes, like kava or lemon balm (something I use myself from time to time)
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
That's an interesting article. I just read through his testing, and it's very vague. It seems he steeped all the teas at the same temperature and for the same time. As you know, that is not how it works. I steep my Chinese green teas for less than a minute at 175 degrees, while I steep my black teas for over 3 minutes at 200 degrees. That is going to significantly alter the amount of caffeine dissolved.