and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— January, 191%, 95 



The use of a high quality tea is therefore not 

 only salutary but economical also. A very tine 

 example of Indian tea is No. 7. The infusion 

 contained as much as 4 per cent, of caffeine and 

 9*5' ) per cent, of tannin. There was onlv 1 

 per cent, of tannin uncnmbined with caffeine 

 and 90 per cent, of caffdine uncombined with 

 tannin. The price of this tea was Is 10^d per lb. 

 On the other hand, Indian tea at about half the 

 price— md— gave 8 73 per cent, of tannin and 

 3 20 per cent, of caffeine, and there was 1 53 per 

 cent, of tannin not combined with caffeine, and 

 the liquor was accordingly harsh and astringent, 

 although the time of infusion was only five 

 minutes. The same applies to the Ceylon teas : 

 a tea quoted at Is 4d per lb. yielded no tannin 

 over and above what is combined as tannate, 

 while one tea quoted at 10JJ gave 2 02 tannin in 

 excess. The tea at Is 4d again yielded 3 60 

 per cent of caffeine, while the tea at lOJd 

 gave 2'96. Ceylon teas, as a rul?, show a 

 more regularly balanced composition as 

 regards the ratio of tannin to caffeine (3 to 1), a 

 finding which would seem to show that Ceylon 

 teas are all that can be asked for from a 

 physiological point of view. 



When we come to China teas there is again 

 seen to be some relation between price and the 

 percentage of caffeine. A cheap China tea. for 

 example (fl^d per lb), gives 1-92 percent, of 

 caffeine, while one at Is 5d per lb yield 2 - 80 per 

 cent. China teas, again, rarely yield an excess 

 of tannin, but nearly always an amount of 

 caffeine in excess of tannin, and caffeine ap- 

 pears to occur in China tea with some constitu- 

 ent other than tannin. 

 Blends and the Behaviouk of Tea with 



Different Waters. 

 So far we have been dealing with individual 

 teas, but we now come to a consideration of 

 blends. Tho aim of the blender is of course to 

 produce a palatable tea and more than that, to 

 mix individual teas so that the whole shall be 

 adapted to the peculiar requirements of differ- 

 ent public water supplies. In doing this, does 

 he unconsciously produce a mixed tea in which, 

 whatever the drawbacks of the individual teas 

 may be, a balance of caffeine and tannin some- 

 where near the ratio of 1 to 3 is effected? It is 

 well-known to tea experts that a tea which pro- 

 duces a pleasant palatable infusion with London 

 water may easily be uninteresting or even pos- 

 sibly bad when made with, say, a very soft 

 peaty water in Dublin or with the soft-water 

 supplies of Plymouth, Aberdeen, Swansea, and 

 elsewhere. The consumer has the same ex- 

 perience, tie will have made up his mind after 

 ooiu-iderable trial that a certain tea in his judg- 

 ment is best, at any rate at home. So con- 

 vinced is he that the tea is a good one that when 

 he happens to travel he will take care to have 

 the same tea with him only to find out that 

 outside his own district at home the tea be- 

 comes different. In other words, he has found 

 a tea which associates perfectly with the home 

 supply of water, but which proves to go badly 

 with waters of different quality. Hence the 

 taster will always be careful to select a tea 

 suited to a particular place, and it is invariably 

 his plan to be sure of this by testing the 

 tea with the actual water supplied to the 



neighbourhood for which the tea is re- 

 quired. It is difficult to see here what 

 guides him in this matter except it be flavour. 

 Tho probability is that rich teas are more suit- 

 able for soft acid waters than for chalky waters. 

 We know, at any rate, that an acid water will 

 tend to neutralise the alkaline salts in tea which 

 keep tannate of caffeine in solution ; it would 

 tend to throw caffeine and tannin in the form 

 of tannate out of solution, and so weaken the 

 infusion, whereas chalky waters would have the 

 opposite tendency and draw closely upon the 

 available tannin and caffeine which are pre- 

 sent in the form of tannate. This is a mere 

 suggestion which may fiud little support in 

 practice, but so far as we have examined blends 

 deemed to be suitable for certain water the 

 choice appears to be in the direction we have 

 indicated. Thus in a blend intended for con- 

 sumption in Dublin, where the water is soft and 

 acid from the peat, the total caffeine tannate 

 amounted to 13 20 percent., the caffeine and 

 tannin being approximately in the 1 to 3 pro- 

 portion, whereas a tea supplied to districts in 

 Scotland wheie the water is soft but not acid 

 the total caffeine tannate amounted to 8 per 

 cent., and a tea for Wales, where the water is 

 again soft but not so acid as Dublin water, 

 the caffeine tannate amounted to 10 - 40 percent., 

 while the blends supplied for chalky waters 

 showed amount of caffeine varying from 10'4 to 

 1160 per cent. 



In all cases it is interesting to observe that the 

 blends showed a near approximation to the ratio 

 of 1 to 3 of caffeine and tannin as in caffeine 

 tannate, and whatever the individual require- 

 ments of different districts may be, the taster 

 seems to know when and how a combination of 

 teas will give a satisfactory result. The varying 

 alkalinity of teas may probably be a factor in 

 the case. What exactly lies behind the choice 

 of a tea to suit the requirements of different dis- 

 tricts is a theme which is difficult to pursue on 

 merely chemical grounds, for in addition to the 

 varying chemical characteristics of different 

 water supplies, there are colonies of people who 

 collectively like a strong pungent liquor, while 

 there are others who prefer their tea to be light 

 and delicate in character. 



The subject is by no means exhausted, but 

 we submit that the foregoing investigation 

 has thrown some new light upon the real 

 character of tea infusion, especially in regard 

 to correlating aesthetic with physiological con- 

 siderations. We have not concerned ourselves at 

 all with the chemistry of the leaf, but with 

 the chemistry of the cup of tea, and in our 

 inquiry we have been assisted by devising new 

 methods of examination. We hope that other 

 investigators will be induced to approach the 

 subject from this standpoint and append a short 

 description of the analytical methods employed. 

 Methods of Analysis. 

 The Estimation of Caffeine Tannate. In all 

 cases the infusion was prepared by taking five 

 grammes of tea and pouring upon the loaves 

 just boiling water to 400 c.c. and leaving the 

 infusion to stand five minutes. It was then 

 filtered. For the estimation of caffeine tannate 

 200 c.c. of infusion was just acidified with dilute 



