How much caffeine can I get from a black Lipton tea bag that is steeped for 3-4 minutes in almost 32 oz water?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “lipton black tea caffeine vs coffee“
How much caffeine can I get from a black Lipton tea bag that is steeped for 3-4 minutes in almost 32 oz water?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “lipton black tea caffeine vs coffee“
Around 40 mg, at a guess. It’s not easy to say for sure. I don’t think changing the amount of water from 8 ounces to 32 ounces makes any difference at all; it doesn’t add caffeine to what is in the dry leaf, and it wouldn’t make that much difference for extraction rate. Agitation would speed up extraction, a little, dunking it a lot. Temperature definitely would; brewing in full boiling point and 8 ounces of water would probably extract more caffeine than just off boiling point in 32 ounces.
Where am I getting this? This is a really good reference:
It was written by a researcher and project implementer employee for Unilever (Lipton), awhile back, but it represented best known information 13 years ago, which probably hasn’t changed much. A table of extraction rates is a good place to start:
After 4 minutes we could expect 60% of the caffeine in the dry tea to have been extracted. So how much was in there to begin with? A standard cup of tea contains 30 to 50 mg of caffeine, but that doesn’t represent the total amount, since that actual total (something over 50 mg) would only be removed after more than 10 minutes of infusion time.
We can probably work backwards from 5 minutes as a standard brewing time, not really guessing, but using the measured data to estimate that it removes 69% of all caffeine. If the caffeine level had been on the high side (let’s go with that, but it will set estimates here high) the total amount present had really been 50 mg / .69 = 72 mg. 60% of that is 43.5 (not a bad guess then). Again agitation would speed up extraction; if you stirred or dunked that bag a lot you could push it higher, just not that much higher, because there is only so much to extract.
Let’s keep going; that was just a guess for caffeine amount:
That lists total caffeine at 55 mg, so the amount extracted using a 4 minute infusion versus 5 (the prior calculation) leads to 48 mgs. If they had used a longer than 5 minute steep time to get to that 55 mg amount then we would be back to closer to 40 mg, infusing for 4 minutes.
We can get to all this by a longer path, by estimating total amount in an average black tea leaf. It’s not so easy to do but I’ve researched this, so I have some measured amounts handy:
Those black teas contain about 20 to 35 mgs of caffeine per dry gram of leaf. Lipton products seem to vary, using either 2 or 2.2 grams per teabag, maybe with other product exceptions, but let’s use 2.2 to go with the higher side.
Variety Assamica typically contains more caffeine than variety Sinensis leaves (both from the Camelia Sinensis plant type), not that we see that clearly in that limited sample set, because there are other factors. Guessing from that list 30 mg / gram of dry leaf is probably a high side estimate, and a real amount could be lower. Crunching all that:
2.2 grams x 30 mg / gram of leaf = 66 mg total
66 mg x 69% extraction (at 5 minutes) = 45.5 mg.
66 mg x 60% extraction (at 4 minutes) = 39.6 mg
Again we were using high-side estimates; if the real amount is down closer to 20 mg / gram dry leaf all that drops quite a bit.
The Caffeine Informer is warning of the risks of caffeine intake (the purpose of that site), so they may have used a long extraction time to get to that total. Let’s check with Lipton, and see how much they say is in a tea bag:
Both Lipton Green Tea and Lipton Matcha Green Tea contain between 28-38 mg of caffeine. That means they’re less caffeinated than black tea such as Lipton Extra Bold, which contains around 38-45mg of caffeine per 8 fl oz. serving.
But Lipton Extra bold contains 2.8 grams of caffeine per bag, so beyond whatever other style differences they adjusted they’re putting more tea in those bags (and they can vary what they see as optimum infusion time to have made that calculated amount higher or lower, presumably with the range shown related to that, differing infusion times):
All this goes a bit far. Using a slightly short extraction time (3–4 minutes versus 5) you would get less than the standard 50 mg (high side per-cup average) of caffeine out of that bag, and it looks like more than 40, with a specific amount depending on which Lipton version you brewed. If the “Extra Bold” really does brew to 45 mg using a 5 minute time then using a Lipton version with 2 or 2.2 mg (versus 2.8) could end up extracting just under 40 mg in 4 minutes.
Let’s run one last low side estimation, to set the range:
2 mg / bag (the “Yellow Label” amount) / 2.8 (adjust amount) x 38 (low side Lipton Extra Bold estimate; we are using a short time) = 27 mg.
So it really could be significantly lower.
I looked up the same page on Caffeine Informer as the first answerer did. But from the wording of the question I gathered that we were talking about ONE Lipton Teabag in 32 oz. of water.
One Lipton teabag in 8 oz of water will release 55 mg of caffeine, roughly half that of a cup of coffee. But if you quadruple the amount of water, it’s still one teabag! You might get a slight increase but I doubt it.
So now you have four 8-oz cups of very weak tea that each have 1/4 of 55mg, or 13.75 mg each. You’d have to drink the whole pot to get 55 mg.
How much caffeine can I get from a black Lipton tea bag that is steeped for 3-4 minutes in almost 32 oz water?
Lipton Tea contains 6.88 mg of caffeine per fl oz (23.25 mg per 100 ml). A 8 fl oz cup has a total of 55 mg of caffeine.
Do the math, and you get 165 mg of caffeine in 32 ounces.