Newsflash: Gourmet Coffees Have Lots Of Caffeine

Evangelion writes "According to the Globe and Mail, gourmet coffees (Starbucks, Second Cup, etc) apparently have lots more caffeine than their non-gourmet competitors. One jumbo (20-oz) contains an entire day's worth of C8H10N4O2." Remember, for best effect, drink it through the day, not all at once.

Comments

Makes me wonder...

[SCSi]

if they do this on purpose, so they can hook you then make you come back to more.. Caffeine withdrawls suck, and if the home-made stuff isnt as potent, people are pretty much the slave of starbucks (or have to drink 2x more home-made coffee)...

Re:Makes me wonder...

[proj_2501]

there's plenty of 'gourmet' coffee available from non-starbucks vendors.

which is good because starbucks coffee is really gross! burnt to a crisp before brewing, yuck!

(and they make their employees work when sick. super)

Re:Makes me wonder...

[ron_ivi]

Considering how successful tobacco, alcohol, soft-drink, etc. companies are, I'm almost surprised coffee shops didn't catch on to this "more caffeine gets people hooked faster" insight earlier.

Re:Makes me wonder...

[Stigmata669]

I think the intention is less dubious than trying to "hook you" and more likely that people like the caffeine high, and are more likely to spend 3.85 for a latte if they get more of a high.

I recently bought a pound of pure Arabica bean which has a very good flavor: no bitterness even in a very strong espresso. My mother who also tried the coffee immediately didn't like it because the caffeine content is much lower in the Arabica bean (most blends have Robusto(sp?) which is very high in caffeine and has a bad/bitter flavor) so she didn't get the normal buzz. "Does this coffee work?!"

Re:Makes me wonder...

[MidnightBrewer]

Whatever marketing drones came up with that notion are idiots. Coffee, while not as bad as cigarettes, is definitely an acquired taste for many people. The sip your girlfriend steals out of your cup is not going to be enough to addict them, no matter how much caffeine is in it.

If you want to avoid caffeine withdrawal and also the jitters and hunger pangs of coffee's caffeine, switch over to green tea; not only does it prevent the nasty headaches and sluggishness, it doesn't make you vibrate at high frequencies or eat more often.

Is this actually a good thing?

[James A. R. Joyce]

I know we make jokes on Slashdot about the usefulness of caffeine as a geek stimulant and all-round pick-me-up, but I'm pretty sure it's better to have less caffeine in your coffee as opposed to more.

More caffeine just because they use more coffee?

[swb]

The article seemed to indicate that because they use 2 tbsp coffee per cup brewed, you end up with more caffeine than other coffee. Is that all there is to it? "GOURMET COFFEE USES MORE COFFEE AND IS THEREFORE STRONGER." Well, duh. Insert $obligatory_canadian_intelligence_insult.

I thought perhaps there was some conspiracy where they were doping coffee with extra caffeine or something.

Re:I knew it!

[cshark]

I think the term no duh comes into play here. Starbucks and friends use coffee that is derived from espresso. Espresso tends to have more caffeine in it. I could have told you that. If you want to get angry, get angry at the soda manufacturers that put caffeine where it shouldn't be (unidentified citrus soda?) as a play to get you hooked. Last I checked oranges and corn syrup didn't naturally have caffeine in them. There was an expose about it on the local news here in Indy awhile back. They said it compares to what the tobacco industry does with nicotine. The only difference... Nobody really cares.

Re:well that explains the jitters

[Penguinshit]

How you can actually drink Folgers is quite beyond me.

When I grew up, coffee came out of a two foot tall stainless steel urn (military special). It was nasty crap that required huge amounts of sugar just to choke down.

Now that I'm a discriminating adult, I have my beans imported from Costa Rica (discovered the brand by accident while on vacation down there). I just plain can not get near a cup of freeze-dried crap anymore.

Do yourself a culinary favor; purchase whole beans, a grinder, and a good drip coffee maker (or a French Press type for those in a hurry). You'll be glad you did.

Gourmet?

[Bilestoad]

Gourmet Coffee? Starbucks!?

What is wrong with you?

(and are you really surprised that a business that aims to have a store on every street corner in the world (according to the CEO) and doesn't mind achieving that by forcing existing stores out of business would learn something from the tobacco industry?)

*blink*

[GeekyGurkha]

If you drink a larger coffee, you get more caffeine.
If you eat a larger portion of chips you get more fat.
Shouldn't this be obvious?
Still with this new revelation I see a raft of lawsuits on the horizon; "Starbucks is at fault for my caffeine addiction because they didn't TELL me that I'd get more caffeine if I drunk more coffee"
The sad part is that they'll probably win as well.

...but why Starbucks?

[TheTXLibra]

You know, I can accept a certain status-quo hatred of Seattle-area based MegaCorps like Microsoft, Barnes & Noble, and so on... They are hated, for the most part, because they have money that the haters do not. There are other reasons to be sure, but it all amounts to the fact that they represent The Man, and hating The Man is en vogue.

Why then, do so many die-hard penguins and independant bookstore shoppers insist on supporting Starbucks? If coffee has an archetypical "The Man" figure, who has way too much money, produces shoddy goods, and destroys good quality companies with its monopoly-like tendancies, it is Starbucks. They put great coffee houses out of business, the kind that you may have met some of your best friends at. They use inferior beans, cooked at too high of a temperature, for too short an amount of time, just to increase output. That's right, you're drinking a bean that was treated worse than those poor saps on WB's Superstars.

Why God? Why of all people, do you, "The Man"-hating intellectuals, actually give them your business?

Re:...but why Starbucks?

[Capital_Z]

You're right. It's wrong for a company to put together a business model, work hard over the years, be competitive, and ultimately succeed. It's fine to support a company, so long as they're not greatly succesful and have locations in more than one county.

Re:...but why Starbucks?

[dghcasp]

I have to put on my MBA hat to answer this one... [1]

Branding and perceptions. Starbucks took a product that you used to pay under $1 for (coffee) and charged you upwards of $3 for it.

Why did people buy it? For the fringe benefit - You and your friends could go to a local Starbucks and hang out for several hours for that $3. There weren't a lot of other places where you could really do that... Bars are too noisy to have conversations, and restraunts want to flip your table and get the next person in.

Eventually, a perceptual association forms: Starbucks == good times with friends. And since you buy coffee anyways, you get in the habit of buying their coffee just for yourself.

You take the cup to work. Everyone sees it (free advertising.) The more people are seen toting Starbucks cups, the more other people want to figure out what the "buzz is."

Then, of course, they expanded like a watermellon dropped from a 747. Now, everywhere you go, you pass a Starbucks. It becomes just too convinient to drop in and pick one up. It becomes too convinient to call a friend and say "I'm at the Starbucks on 7th S.W. - come on over."

Now, people continue to patronize because they've become comfortable with the brand.

[1] I actually do have a hat that says "MBA" - I got it on the first day of my program. I guess they figured it softened the blow of the tuition bill... "Hey, you get a hat."

Highest caffeine

[Srividya]

Is our Indian coffee, keeping you awake all day. Very good.

Real Coffee Drinkers

[Giant Panda]

Real coffee drinkers only drink drip. Starbucks is fine, SBC is fine, fresh ground from the store is fine. Folgers is not.

Re:I knew it!

[superbondbond]

Starbucks and friends use coffee that is derived from espresso. Espresso tends to have more caffeine in it.

The coffee used for espresso is not necessarily different from the stuff used to make regular coffee. There is nothing different in the bean itself, or even how it's ground. Espresso by definition is what is specifically produced by a specific method.

The "gourmet" coffee places tend to use what I would consider closer to the proper ratio of 2T of ground coffee for each 6 oz. of water. Hence more caffeine.

Brown?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of dumbass law would that be? There's tons of "super-caffeinated" drinks that are yellow, orange, red, etc available in Canada. No, the law is that fruit derived drinks can't have caffiene added.

hear, hear!

[timothy]

I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks, except to defend it (or them, to UK readers) against kneejerking knee-jerkers' jerking knees ;)

However, the perception that Starbucks has "driven out local coffee houses with inferior, burnt-tasting coffee" is at least mostly baloney. (In this, to be clear, I am agreeing with the parent poster, just strenuously enough to say more than "me too!")

Starbucks (and now other notable Evil Chains) have probably done more to increase coffee appreciation than any other single factor. When I was younger, there *was* no established coffee scene; Yes, there was a restaurant (semi-greasy spoon) called The White Coffee Pot, Jr. in my childhood small town (now part of an obscure and probably defunct chain, I think), but there was no source of sit-and-read-a-paper coffee of any quality worth coming back to for the coffee.

Starbucks coffee itself may not be worth much snobbery, but realize that the culture of coffee snobbery in the U.S. (nascent, or at best adolescent) certainly owes a lot of Starbucks, with its network (cells?) of consistently OK coffee outlets throughout the country. It's hip to be above Starbucks -- a few years ago, Starbucks was something to aspire to (strong, rich coffee served in comfy surroundings); since the chain is now successful and ubiquitous, it's hard to maintain aspirational status when you're a much-mocked franchise commodity.

So Starbucks, while it isn't exactly dying on the vine, has a) made people think about coffee and b) -- or maybe this should be a', but that makes for an ugly list -- made for a much better environment for hipper coffee bars to inhabit. There may be some coffee bars that Starbucks has driven out of business -- no doubt. But there are also a lot that Starbucks has caused to spring up, or to spruce themselves up. And like the parent poster says, some of them have free WiFi ;) (Around Seattle, a lot more have pay-for WiFi, but that's better than nothing, when you need a connection.)

[Subliminal message: Avoid that corporate exploiter Starbucks, that cheap mangler of souls and exploiter of little girls! Come over to Tim's Javanation, which uses exclusively fair-trade coffee beans processed by exotic but happy parrots, steam pressed in a brick oven. We're still working on the franchise bit and have only this hired clown to exploit ... for now. But just you wait -- we're going to be the next Starbucks! Avoid that corporate exploiter Starbucks ... oh.]

People born before 1980 may remember when the Gap's clothes were *cool* among a huge chunk of the population, mostly the population under 20; now they're pleasant enough, but unremarkable. Unhip, mostly, or at least ahip. ("I'm not a hipster; I'm an ahipster.") Shopping at the Gap is an essentially conventional, socially conservative act (and hey -- The Big Shirt!). In 1985, the Gap was not a place many parents would shop for themselves, only for their kids. Not so now. Extended metaphor over.

timothy