Yesterday, Front Street was chatting with a regular customer and asked why he always travels such a long distance to drink coffee at Front Street. After all, Front Street's store location is quite remote, and they also sell drip bag coffee online on Taobao that you can brew at home, so there's really no need to go through all that trouble to make a special trip every day.And just as Front Street had mentally prepared to receive a series of compliments like "beautiful and sweet-voiced" or "makes especially delicious coffee," he said: "Because drinking your coffee doesn't give me insomnia or heart palpitations..."Then he started asking: "Why is it that when I drink coffee at other places, I easily get insomnia and heart palpitations, but at your place I don't? And it seems like drinking Americano also causes insomnia more easily than pour-over? Why is that?"The answer is simple — it's caused by different caffeine content!This type of friend is a typical caffeine-sensitive person,so when they intake a higher amount of caffeine, insomnia and heart palpitations occur.And the reason why coffee from different cafes has different effects is simply because these coffees have different caffeine contents! Some are lower, some are higher, which leads to the situation where some cause insomnia and others don't. So why does this difference occur?It's affected by many factors, such as coffee dose, extraction method, bean variety, etc. As we all know, caffeine comes from coffeefruit(beans). Generally speaking, the more coffee beans used, the higher the caffeine content in the extracted coffee. Take Americano for example — some cafes use 18g of coffee to extract espresso, while others use 20g, so the difference in coffee dose can potentially create a difference in caffeine content.
In addition, the extraction method also affects caffeine content. For example, with the same 20g of coffee, when we use different extraction methods, the resulting caffeine content will differ. Say Front Street uses the pour-over method for extraction — its extraction rate might be 20%, whereas if espresso method is used, the extraction rate might be 22%. By comparison, pour-over has a lower caffeine concentration than espresso, so when we drink pour-over, we're less likely to get insomnia like we would from Americano(this is just an example — there are actually many other influencing factors).Or both are used for making espresso, but the first cup is made with 92°C water temperature and the second with 94°C — then the second cup's caffeine content will most likely be higher than the first. Because the extraction efficiency is higher, more caffeine will dissolve out from the coffee beans.Of course, it could also be due to the coffee beans themselves. Just like various fruits, coffee also has different varieties, and these different varieties have different caffeine contents. Currently, commercial coffee on the market is mainly divided into two major categories:Arabicaand Robusta.Arabica is the most widely used variety in coffee shops — its caffeine content is relatively low, accounting for about 0.9%~1.2% of bean weight. It also has rich sugars and abundant oils, which give the coffee made from it a very rich aroma. Because of this, Arabica is widely favored by major coffee shops.(Arabica on the left, Robusta on the right)Compared to Arabica, Robusta has about double the caffeine — generally around twice that of Arabica. Not only that, but its amino acids andchlorogenic acidcontent are also higher than Arabica's. This gives the coffee made from it a very heavy body and flavor, making it very suitable as raw material for instant coffee or added to blends to enhance quality and flavor. The "Front Street Commercial Blend" in Front Street's bean list includes 10% Robusta to give the coffee a richer taste and thicker crema.If the coffee beans a shop uses contain Robusta, then the caffeine content will be somewhat higher than pure Arabica. However, it's worth noting that Robusta is not a representative of inferior quality — it has many advantages, but since this isn't an article introducing Robusta, Front Street won't elaborate further here.In summary, we can conclude: extraction method, coffee dose, and the bean variety used are all major factors affecting whether caffeine content is high or low. For people who are highly sensitive to caffeine, it's best to pay attention to your daily coffee intake. Alternatively, switch to decaf coffee. Since decaf coffee has extremely low caffeine content, even without much control, insomnia and heart palpitations won't easily occur.Decaf coffee comes in different types, with the current mainstream being artificially decaffeinated. In Front Street's bean list, there's a Front Street Decaf Coffee from Colombia that uses theSwiss Water Process. The caffeine in the coffee beans is not only well removed(reduced to 3% of the original bean's caffeine), but a certain amount of flavor is also retained. If you're someone who's sensitive to caffeine, then decaf coffee is still worth trying~
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
