EGC (epigallocatechin)
The catechin without a gallate group — bitter more than drying, and the partner EGCG needs to make a theaflavin.
What a drinker notices
- Bitterness — a taste
- Sweetness — a taste
Bitter on the tongue, with a sweetish sensation in the return that arrives after swallowing — the hui gan that Chinese green tea drinkers look for. It has far less grip than the gallated catechins.
What this gets credited for, wrongly
The sweet aftertaste of a good green tea is often credited to sugars. Sugars are present and are a small part of it; a large part is this compound's own return, which is why the effect survives in a tea with almost no sweetness on the front palate.
What it is
EGC is the second most abundant catechin in most green teas and it behaves quite differently from EGCG, which is the whole reason both have records here. Without a gallate group it dries the mouth far less, and what it contributes instead is bitterness with a sweetish return afterwards. It is also structurally indispensable during oxidation: a theaflavin is built from one gallocatechin-type unit and one catechin-type unit, so a leaf rich in EGC and poor in EC will make a different theaflavin mix — and a differently brisk black tea — from one with the reverse balance.
Chemically: Non-galloylated flavan-3-ol — a major catechin of green tea.
Where it occurs in the plant
A major share of the catechin pool through the shoot, tracking total catechin content and falling under shade like the rest of the group.
What processing does to it
In tea, processing is not a modifier applied to a fixed composition — it is what decides the composition. These are the steps that move this compound, and each links to the step itself.
- Oxidation — Turns it into something else
- One of the two required halves of a theaflavin. Paired with EC it makes the simplest theaflavin; the ratio of gallocatechin- to catechin-type units in the leaf decides which theaflavins a black tea ends up with.
- Pan-firing (Chinese fixation) — Locks it in place
- Chinese pan-firing arrests the enzymes more gradually than Japanese steaming, so a little oxidation happens on the way and the catechin balance shifts slightly before it is locked.
How brewing brings it out
Extraction rate: Moderate
More readily soluble than the gallated catechins and less dependent on heat, so it makes up a larger share of a cool brew than of a hot one. A low-temperature green tea is proportionally more bitter-with-sweet-return and less drying.
Across infusions: Comes out earlier than EGCG, which is part of why a first infusion can be bitter without yet being drying.
Water: Less affected by hardness than the galloylated catechins are, because it has no gallate group to bind the calcium and magnesium. That difference is why hard water shifts the BALANCE of a cup rather than simply weakening it — the drying fraction is knocked back further than the bitter one.
Leaf, ratio and agitation: The most abundant catechin in most green teas by weight, so it moves with leaf quantity almost proportionally and is the main reason a heavy-handed green tastes punishing.
What you can change
- Lower the temperature to shift the balance towards it and away from the drying catechins
- Shorten the steep to reduce bitterness
Teas this compound defines
Read next
- EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) — The most abundant catechin in green tea, and the clearest single demonstration that astringency and bitterness are different things.
- Epicatechin — The smallest and mildest tea catechin, present in cocoa and apples as well, and the other half of a simple theaflavin.
- Catechins — The largest soluble fraction of a green tea leaf, the source of astringency, and the compounds oxidation turns into everything a black tea is.
- Theaflavins — The bright orange-red pigments oxidation builds from catechins, and the compounds the tea trade means by briskness.
What this page does not say
This record describes a catechin's taste, its role in oxidation and how it extracts. It makes no statement about what it does in a body.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis of well-established tea chemistry. No external technical document stands behind it, and that constraint is why there are almost no numbers here: directions, rankings and mechanisms are stated plainly, quantities are not, because a figure nobody can check would look more authoritative than it deserves.