The lightest brewed tea Starbucks sells
Emperor’s Clouds & Mist, a loose-leaf green tea, is Starbucks’ lowest-caffeine hot tea by a wide margin: 1 to 15 mg in a Short or Tall, and 16 to 25 mg in a Grande or Venti. That is well under Starbucks’ black teas, which carry a flat 40 mg at every size for both English Breakfast and Earl Grey, and roughly in the range of home-brewed green tea, which USDA measures at about 29 mg for an 8 oz cup.
Why it’s published as a range
Starbucks gives this tea as a range rather than one number, wider proportionally than its other teas, most likely reflecting how loose-leaf green tea’s caffeine varies more with steep time than a bagged black tea does. This site uses the top of the range, 25 mg for a Grande, when counting toward a daily limit.
Its powdered cousin on the same menu, Matcha Latte, carries much more, 65 mg in a Grande, because whisking the whole leaf into the drink extracts more caffeine than steeping and removing it.
For anyone choosing between Starbucks’ teas specifically to keep caffeine low, this is the one to pick over the black teas or the matcha, short of a genuinely caffeine-free herbal option.
Where it fits in a day
At up to 25 mg, a Grande is far under the 200 mg single dose EFSA assessed as safe for healthy adults, and well under the 400 mg daily figure the FDA cites. Even in pregnancy, where ACOG uses a 200 mg daily ceiling, several cups a day fit comfortably.