Apparently tea contains more caffeine than coffee. Why is it that coffee is typically so much more stimulating than tea?

Nick, London UK

• Tea leaves have more caffeine than coffee beans before they are brewed. Prepared, however, tea is diluted quite a bit more than most coffees. Each will vary depending on how strong you like it, though. I understand also that the caffeine content in tea is extracted during the first ten seconds of brewing. So if you're looking for more of a jolt, don't steep the tea for ages, just use more tea leaves.

  Elfling, New York USA

• Unmade tea contains more caffeine than unmade coffee, however when you make the drink lots of caffeine is left in the tea leaves you throw away leaving less in the tea you drink than in coffee.

  Sue, Cambridge uk

• Coffee contains more caffeine. 60mg per cup, compared to 50mg for tea. These are typical values.

  Dermot Nolan, Oxford, UK

• Tea is also commonly drank white while coffee tends to be drunk black. As warm milk has sedative qualities it is reasonable to assume that this couteracts some of the effects of the caffeine

  Tom, London

• Why do you accuse Tom of "making it up," Danny? The assertion that tannic acids deleteriously affect caffeine in beverages is widely attested--alternately as; binding to/ nutralising the caffeine molecule, countering the stimulative properties, or as reducing the degree of bio-uptake. I am not a 'chemist' (US usage), so I have no idea if any of those claims are consistent with the scientific literature. However Tom certainly did NOT pull the idea out of his ear for this discussion board! (JFGI before accusing someone of lying, here's one of many pages repeating the claim: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Combined-Stimulation-of-Caffeine-and-Tannin-in-Tea&id=3604069 )

  Tobias, Honolulu, US

• I drink tons of hot tea all day but I reuse the tea bag once because I heard the second cup would essentially be decaffienated. Now I learn that too much caffeine is bad for osteoporosis conditions. How much is too much?

  Judy, Harpers Ferry USA

• Well, I was a Navy man for 30 years, and basically lived off of a combination of stimulants during that time. My favourite morning wake up was half a dozen 200mg Vivarin caffeine tablets washed down with a quadruple espresso light-roast. (Light roasts have more caffeine than dark or French roasts.) You have to understand that my rating was so undermanned that we typically stood watch-and-watch at sea. (For you land lubbers, that's four hours on duty, and four hours off, around the clock.) It does take a toll on you after a while. Back to the point, if I was in the mood for tea, I'd brew up a pot of English Breakfast loose-leaf. My German grandfather learned how to make it in a British P.O.W. camp in WWI. He would use two heaping tablespoons of tea per cup, and pour boiling water on it straight from the stove (in a pre-warmed pot, of course.) As it was steeping, he'd use a potato masher to press the leaves several times to "burst the leaves", as he put it. After it had steeped for 10 minutes, he use a wire whisk to whip air into the water to give it more flavour. (He said the boiled water has no air dissolved in it, and tastes flat.) When I followed his method (usually served Russian style with loaf sugar and lemon, or jam) I had no problems either waking up or staying awake. (When I was ashore, I thought the coffee and tea tasted a little strange for a while until I realized what it was. The water on land didn't have an exotic mixture of fuels floating atop your beverage, making little rainbows on the surface. Ah, the good old days...)

  Aryea, St. Louis, US

• I drank five cups in a couple of hours this morning and no one seemed to notice and I was as smooth as ever. I guess my tolerance is quite good.

  Willie E, Dubai