"Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant of the methylxanthine class. It is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drugs."
Wow, now that that's out of the way...
Have you ever wondered how much caffeine is in that cup of coffee that you're drinking? That can be an important value to be aware of for health reasons or just so you are aware of your limits or maybe you're just curious!
Now of course all different coffees are going to contain a different quantity of caffeine. Different brew methods will also fluctuate your caffeine content. For the sake of ease, we are talking about Arabica drip coffee here. Please keep in mind that this is an average calculation and not a calculation that is exact.
Now the number we have to keep in mind for our calculation is 1.25. Generally in drip coffee, the caffeine found in your cup is 1.25% of the total amount of beans used to brew that coffee. Let's dive into an example.
If you use 20g to 320ml water, you will generally net about 280ml of drinkable coffee. The 40ml of water that just disappears is actually being held in the brewed grounds, but I digress. So of that 20g of beans, the caffiene makes up 1.25% of that. This means that you have .25g or 250mg of caffiene in your cup of coffee. If you have two of those cups, you have just consumed 500mg of caffiene. Now everyone has a different threshold for caffiene, so I'm not going to be the one to tell you how much you should and shouldn't drink.
So now what if you weren't the one to brew your own coffee and you don't know how many grams of beans were used? Well again as an average, a safe calculation is that most cafes use about a 1:16 ratio when brewing coffee. That means that for every gram of coffee you use, you are adding 16ml of water to it. With this information we can now simply do a reverse calculation. If you just went to your local cafe and ordered a large coffee (let's say it's 450ml), take your 450ml and divide it by 16, this gives you about 28. Now take that 28g and find 1.25% of it. This calculation would give you .35g, meaning in your large coffee there is about 350mg of caffeine.
I hope this has been somewhat handy for you and might be able to help you in the future!
If you want more "scientific" posts like this in the future, let me know!
Remember to always strive to brew coffee better!