


Temperature, pressure and the amount of ground coffee used were less relevant than one might think. The two most important parameters that affected the coffee’s ultimate caffeine content were time and volume.The overall, absolute caffeine content and the content in relation to serving size are two completely different things.That’s because the results of our huge test, which was backed with the scientific support of the Institut für Produktqualität (IFP) - the Institute for Product Quality - in Adlershof, Berlin, demonstrated several things: However, the results of these tests finally gave us some exact specifications, and they also clued us into which preparation method is the best to give you the ultimate caffeine jolt.Īs you can probably imagine, everyone was placing bets about which coffee preparation method or which kind of coffee would contain the most caffeine, and everyone seemed to have different predictions going into this. Obviously, my tests can’t change the fact that caffeine content will vary from bean to bean and from brew to brew.

Even though they are both experienced coffee roasters, they really had no idea (nor could they) how much caffeine was actually in the beans they were dealing with every day. Nadine Heymann about my idea, they were enthusiastic about it right away. I used the same master batch of beans to make coffee in 15 different ways - everything from using a classic pour-over, all the way to making cold brew coffee with different steeping times. To set up our caffeine test, I was allowed to commandeer the Flying Roasters café and roasting operation in Wedding, a district of Berlin, for a whole day. Instead, I called upon a certified test lab to calculate the exact numbers for me, you and the whole world of coffee lovers.įrom what I can tell, we at Coffeeness are so far the only ones out there who have taken this beyond a mere scientific curiosity, actually putting in the effort to run these kinds of tests and then making them available for anyone to see. I didn’t want to just use ballpark figures or back-of-the-envelope calculations to figure out how much caffeine is in different kinds of coffees. I’ll even admit that I myself have worked with these inexact and unproven numbers - at least when there was a lack of better evidence. Many people take those claims at face value because they sound authoritative, and because we want our blogs and news sites to have “evidence” and “proof.” Heck, you could even pick two beans growing next to each other on the same branch, and they each might contain different amounts of caffeine - and that variation will only grow more pronounced if you roast them differently.ĭespite all that, you’ll still find all kinds of claims about the amount of caffeine in a cup of drip coffee or a shot of espresso, although nobody seems to know where these numbers actually come from. There are obviously enormous variations between Arabica and Robusta beans, but you can even notice significant differences between beans of the same variety, such as an Arabica bean from India and another Arabica bean from Guatemala. When we start dealing with the question of caffeine in coffee, we inevitably also have to deal with approximate figures and percentages, and right now I should issue the disclaimer that every coffee bean is different.
