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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.
I wonder how many people actually drink straight up coffee at their gourmet coffee shops. It's been my experience here in Seattle (home to Starbucks) that most folks are ordering lattes, caramel machiattos, mochas, etc. than a regular cup o' joe.
-- jchenx
Every so often I quit coffee, just to do it.
Rather than quit cold, and get the nasty headaches, it's a heck of a lot easier to gradually reduce -- I start with my regular level, and then the next day have a bit more than half as much, and so on for a few days, till it's just a sip.
Or, you can quit cold and get a wicked headache for a day or so...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Is there a legal limit for caffeine content?
The answer to that is it depends on the country. A few examples of laws related to caffeine content for food and drinks include the following:
In the United States there is a limit of 6mg of caffeine per liquid ounce in beverages. There is also a limit of 200mg in pills such as Vivrin.
From, article, a 20oz coffee has 400 mg of caffeine, or 20 mg/oz - so would it be illegal for Starbucks to sell that same coffee in the States?
Who knows, maybe the coffee FAQ is wrong...but it was on the internet so it must be true!
I must agree that "Charbux" coffee is extremely over-roasted. When Cook's Illustrated did a coffee comparison, their tasters didn't like Starbucks. When they had some people that work blending coffees check them out, their opinion was that Starbux beans were higher quality than the others, but they were so burned that the result was just plain ol' nasty.
They have to do that to get consistancy. The point of the franchise is that everywhere you go in the country or world you get exactly the same product. They couldn't do that if they let the natural flavors come through.
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The description is a good thing, but just like their damn cup sizes, why deviate from a perfectly good standard in naming the roast? Coffee tasting is exactly like wine tasting, in fact, and has a standard language that does borrow a lot from wine tasting. Of course, one of the descriptive terms used is 'winey' which I don't think wine tasters use. :-)
The place I worked at in New Haven, CT, Willoughby's (An old and well respected name in the coffee biz, btw), had numerous pamphlets describing coffee tasting terms, and the different tastes of the different types and roasts of coffee. They had professional tasters who would visit the coffee producing regions of the world and the big coffee trade shows evey year and rate the coffee, deciding what to buy based on what was good (and fashionable, to be honest) that year. They do it like wine tasters, noisily slurping pure strong coffee out of little cups then spitting it out and rinsing with water in between.
They trained us counter people really well. We kept a seperate grinder for flavored coffees so as not to contaminate the good stuff. We would always try to talk people out of buying flavored coffees and into grinding it themselves, "You know they invented flavored coffees to cover up the taste of bad beans, right? And you know it loses most of it's flavor two hours after you grind it, right?"
We would also try to talk people out of the really expensive and over rated stuff. Guess what, folks? Kona is crap coffee, weak and flavorless. It's only expensive because it's from Hawaii and it has a mystique. Know what else? Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is mediocre. It's almost identical to Columbian.
My favorites have always been Guatamalan Antigua for it's complex spicy flavor, and Kenya AA for it's acidity and winey taste. Full city roast, fresh from the roaster, ground, brewed and drunk right there. If you haven't tasted really fresh roasted coffee, you haven't tasted gourmet coffee at all. Coffee loses 90% of the volatile gasses trapped in the beans within two days of roasting, unless kept in a cool, dark, airtight container, in which case it takes a week. Know why they put those valves on sealed coffee bags? IT'S TO LET THE FLAVOR OUT! Seriously, the escaped gas that contains almost all the varietal distinction and aroma has to go somewhere or the bag will explode.
I got so addicted to the taste of fresh roasted coffe, I started roasting it at home in a cast iron skillet. Gave it up after a few months because it was too much work and made the house smell of roasting coffee (which doesn't smell nearly as nice as brewing coffee.)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This person has obviously never drank coffee in the United States. American coffee, when not served too weak, usually tastes like battery acid (or, in culinary terms, "robusta," apparently.)
I had to realize the article was from a Canadian paper before I could understand why they were making such a big deal over gas station and donut shop coffee being weaker. In America, that is not only the norm, it barely rates above "hot water that somebody has dipped a dirty rag in."
People, American coffee sucks. I never knew this until I lived in Germany, where the coffee you buy in your supermarket is incredibly superior for the same price as American store-bought coffee. I had to defend American coffee to my German friends because I had no idea what they meant by our coffee being weak.
Heck, here in Japan, they sell coffee in "regular" and "American" styles, where "American" is used synonomously with "weak." I've even had the waitress at a restaurant, unprompted, apologize to me that the only coffee they have to offer is American.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
This is completely off topic, but I'll jump in with two feet... (I write as a former Starbucks partner with two years of experience from the bottom up to middle management)
Fortune Magazine consistently rates Starbucks as one of America's top 100 employers. There is a reason; they offer excellent benefits, reasonable compensation, and a good working environment. On paper, if you look at the training programs and advancement opportunities within the company, it looks fantastic from the outside. Specifically, there are company (and health code) regulations that forbid sick people from working.
However, these do no good within a company with an entrenched corporate culture that encourages and rewards dishonesty, bullying, cheating, and backstabbing. Unwritten rules always trump written policies making the job a joyless hell for some.
Consider this scenario: you work at Starbucks part time, about 20 hours a week. This is the cut-off point for heath converage (a quite generous plan); partner must maintain 20 hrs/week to be eligible for this coverage. Sick leave is not available for hourly employees. So if you are sick you face the tough choice of working sick or losing your health coverage. The kicker is that managers are trained (in the informal wink and grin style) to keep many employees' hours close to this level and use this leverage to minimize employees calling in and disrupting the business. It's a devious crock but nobody has been forced to work while ill.