How Much Caffeine is In Coffee?
Coffee is good for us in a lot of ways, but let’s not pretend the major reason why most of us drink it is for that boost in the morning.
Caffeine in coffee is perhaps one of its more favorable qualities, but how much caffeine is in there that’s enough to wake us up?
Actually, the question to how much caffeine is in coffee is not a simple one.
Because there’s many different kinds of coffee paired with different methods of brewing and roasting, the amount of caffeine that ends up in your cup of coffee might actually differ from cup to cup!
Let’s dive into what could be affecting caffeine levels in coffee…
Why Caffeine Levels Differ in Coffee
There are a lot of factors that go into how much of a boost the coffee you’re drinking will give you!
Temperature
Firstly, temperature is a big one.
Heat helps extract more caffeine from the coffee grounds, so making hot coffee will give you more caffeine than if you were to make cold brew, for example.
Coffee-to-Water Ratio
Different coffee types use different coffee-to-water ratios which would in turn affect how much caffeine is in that cup of coffee.
Take for example espresso, brewed coffee, and cold brew. Even though, at the end of the day, you’ll be drinking one ‘cup’ of coffee, each of these are prepared using different amounts of coffee and water.
But How Much Caffeine Is Actually in Coffee?
Now that we’ve touched on why different cups of coffee might have different caffeine content, let’s check out how much caffeine each different kind of coffee will approximately have.
Brewed Coffee
Assuming this is one of the most popular ways to drink coffee in the US, the caffeine content of a simple cup of brewed coffee might be what you’re looking for.
On average, an 8 oz cup of brewed coffee will have 95 mg of caffeine.
Espresso
Espresso is more concentrated than brewed coffee, so it makes sense that it would have more caffeine.
But in fact, the caffeine you’ll get from a shot of espresso tends to be less than that of brewed coffee because of its smaller serving size.
Espresso does indeed have more caffeine per volume than brewed coffee, but if a cup of brewed coffee will give you 95 mg of caffeine, then a shot of espresso would give you 63 mg of caffeine.
If you want to make the best of caffeine in espresso, you can go for a double shot which would have roughly 125 mg of caffeine!
Espresso-Based Drinks
Brewed coffee is great, but sometimes a nice cup of latte or cappuccino is a way to spoil ourselves.
Lots of people wonder about how much caffeine is in espresso-based drinks of the sort.
Since these drinks usually use a shot of espresso, their caffeine content would probably be equal that of the shot, which is, as we’ve explained above, roughly 63 mg.
Instant Coffee
Instant coffee has significantly less caffeine than brewed coffee.
An 8 oz cup of instant coffee will give you only 57 mg of caffeine. This might mean you’ll need to drink more of it to get the same effect of a cup of brew!
Cold Brew
We’ve talked about how temperature and coffee-to-water ratio affect how much caffeine goes into your coffee.
In reality, cold brew is brewed as a concentrate and subsequently uses almost two to three times the coffee-to-water ratio compared to hot brew.
This is why cold brew is diluted with water.
So even after the dilution, cold brew usually has more caffeine than regular, hot coffee because it uses more coffee to yield the same liquid amount of both. A 12 oz cup of cold brew has almost 207 mg of caffeine!
That being said, if you brew two batches of hot and cold brew using the same coffee-to-water ratio and same coffee grind size (grind size is also a factor), you’ll end up with more highly caffeinated hot brew than cold.
Conclusion
Whether you drink your coffee for its buzz or if it’s just for the taste, it’s important to know how much caffeine is in your cup of coffee.
Different coffee types have different caffeine levels depending on how they’re brewed, so we hope this article has made it clearer for you what you next need to drink for that optimum fuel in the morning!