Bonyuttams

So, you must have heard about the Decaf Tea or Decaffeinated Tea. It is tea we get after it is being processed for Decaffeination (the act of removing caffeine from coffee beans, mate, cocoa, tea leaves and other caffeine containing materials). This form of tea is becoming increasingly popular these days and I thought I should write a short article about it as I too drink a lot of tea.

Now, how does this caffeine actually gets into out tea? Well, Caffeine is a natural product of many plants. They produce caffeine in order to check the growth of insects and pests over them that eat up their leaves and stems. The quantity of caffeine produced by various tea plants is however different and hence the level of caffeine we get into our tea. Studies say that the younger buds and leaves of a plant (or a tea plant, as we are concerned with the tea plants and tea leaves here) contain more caffeine on average than older leaves and stems.

So, now we have this caffeine into our tea and we want to remove it before it gets into out cup. The process of removing the caffeine from the raw tea is called the decaffeination and there are actually several ways to decaf the tea. Some of the industrial method of decaffeination uses Ethyl acetate which can form natural bonds with the caffeine. If you search around a bit, you can even find methods to decaf tea yourself at home. Or else you can but decaf tea from the market.