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Comment by _moog | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, in numerous studies conducted throughout the world, consuming four or five eight-ounce cups of coffee (or about 400 milligrams of caffeine) a day has been associated with reduced death rates.

That seems like an absurd amount of coffee to drink in one day, no?

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150mg for a double shot of espresso, knock back three before lunch. Boom, I'm at 450mg and it's not really a whole load of volume to drink.

It's easier than you think!

Holy shit, I would be bouncing off the walls if I drank that much coffee. I can't even handle one in the morning and one in the afternoon or I will be awake until 4 in the morning

IIRC the half-life of caffeine is approx 12 hours. So if you put caffeine in your body at 2:00 PM, half of it is still there at 2:00 AM.

Different sources quote a half-life of 3-5 hours in healthy individuals who are not pregnant.

https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-caffeine/ Caffeine begins to affect your body very quickly. It reaches a peak level in your blood within 30 to 60 minutes. It has a half-life of 3 to 5 hours.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/ The mean half-life of caffeine in plasma of healthy individuals is about 5 hours. However, caffeine's elimination half-life may range between 1.5 and 9.5 hours,

https://www.news-medical.net/health/Caffeine-Pharmacology.as... The half-life of caffeine (time taken for the body to eliminate one-half of the caffeine) varies widely between people, depending on factors such as age, body weight, pregnancy status, medication intake and liver health. In healthy adults, the half-life is approximately 5 to 6 hours. Heavy cigarette smoking can decrease the half-life of caffeine by up to a half and in pregnancy, the half-life may be increased by as much as 15 hours. [...] The stimulatory effects of caffeine may begin as early as 15 minutes after ingesting the drug and last as long as six hours.

People metabolize caffeine at wildly different rates depending on their genes. One cup every other day in the morning is my limit until I see significant effects on deep sleep (as measured by a Dreem 2.) :/

That's the way to do it. No sugars or anything, just that great taste.

I saved a huge amount of money going from pods to a manual Breville Barista, which whilst making coffee shop quality brew is also far better for the environment. Price of purchase was recovered in 6 months, and all savings from there.

What is manual about a bee like barista?

Sorry, probably a joke over head case, but on the https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/espresso/bes870.html you pick grind setting and amount yourself. There are others that do everything automatically, at a much higher price.

Heads up, this depends on what you mean by double shot of espresso. One ‘payload’ of espresso as regularly consumed is usually 15-18g of ground coffee and has about 75mg of caffeine. Confusingly, traditionally and especially in Italy this is called a ‘double’ espresso. Because of that reason it’s better to talk about caffeine in terms of grams in.

Unless you are pulling two shots of espresso into the same cup (which will likely overflow your average espresso cup) your caffeine intake per shot of espresso is 60 to 75mg. I don’t know of any portafilter basket that would let you get to 150mg in one pull, that would be a quadruple espresso.

Back 10+ years ago when I had my machine 21g baskets were all the rage, and I think I remember whispers of larger.

Yes, that used to be the case I think. The espresso world backed off of that in the last few years. Nowadays the average dose is trending lower. Possibly, half the reason is that a larger dose is more inefficient (i.e. it drops your extraction rate) and the other half is that coffee costs money and for coffee shops that operate at 5-10% margins, 14g doses (standard Italian double espresso) vs 21g (the ‘third wave’ dose up till a few years ago) does make a meaningful difference in whether the store is under water or not. I think it’s settling around 16-18g.

Operating margins, not gross margins right? Would you happen to know what's a "typical" wholesale cost (i.e. to the café) for third-wave beans?

Yes. James Hoffmann on YouTube talks more about the margins of coffee business if you'd like to learn more, that's where my knowledge comes from for the most part.

I just went an measured, about 18g of finely ground coffee fit into my 'double' espresso shot... However I could easily power through 5 of those a day.

I further fell from grace when I started packing as much as possible into a massive percolator for rocket fuel by the filled cup.

But you are right, 3 shots is probably not that much caffeine. It's somewhat hard to get good numbers on it.

Yes, and honestly you’re doing fine, because your 3 pulls of espresso is about the same as a Starbucks venti latte at 180-190mg. I think in Europe the caffeine content is even higher at something like 225mg for the same latte.

If you really, and I mean really want to have a go at the rocket fuel territory, you can do what many cafes in Istanbul now offer: Turkish coffee… at a regular coffee size. I think it takes about 150g of ground coffee per cup. That’s like pulling repeated shots of espresso till you fill a regular mug, except Turkish coffee is finer ground so has more caffeine than your average espresso per gram of coffee in.

Obviously, don’t try this if you have any medical conditions or sensitivity to caffeine, but this is what some Turks often drink on their days off.

My IBS looks at this and thinks "No shit, Sherlock! Actually is gonna be tons of shit after this".

Stepping aside myself trying to make a Brazilian's joke in English, a single cup of coffee (around 80mg-120mg) really give me cramps and sometimes diarrhea.

I always start the day splitting a 12 cup pot with my husband, frequently we make more later in the morning. It's really nothing if you are habituated to it and not especially caffeine sensitive. I know many other similarly heavy coffee drinkers.

You drink six cups of coffee in something like a three hour period? Seems like some kind of addiction.

What do you gain from that?

It tastes good, especially with breakfast food, wakes me up a bit, and is hydrating. I experience no negatives, and nothing in particular happens to me if I skip it either. It seems implausible to frame as an addiction unless you start from the preconception that caffeine must be a vice.

And according to this article, and others, I apparently gain various health benefits from my preferred beverage to boot :)

It is, especially for folks with health conditions or smaller body types.

Cherry picking studies (mostly funded by producers) means never having to admit your vices are a problem.

If it's spaced out well, it should be fine. It might make one feel a bit hot/irritable though.

Often caffeine tablets are sold as 200mg, so it's just two of those. (One bottle of tablets I have says don't exceed 5 pills in 24 hours - 1 gram!)

Be careful with caffeine supplements such as pills and (especially) powders. Overdosing is far too easy and can be a substantial health risk, even deadly - https://www.health.com/nutrition/caffeine-powder-overdose

yeah during my worse abuses of coffee i was pushing my limits in 5-6 and regretting it purely from a "sick feeling".

I don't have any issues sleeping no matter how much coffee I drink. but "stomaching it" is a different matter entirely.

Seems average for a coffee-drinking office worker. One for breakfast, one for lunch and one between each major meal (assuming 100mg per cup which would be normal for a middle-roast brew coffee).

But as others have mentioned, it’s hard to control for other factors.

I imagine 300+ mg of caffeine is also associated with a less sedentary lifestyle, for example.

Excess looks like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UGtKGX8B9hU

Eight ounce cups are quite small. For reference, at Starbucks it’s called a “short.”

I know lots of people in my office will drink two 16 oz cups a day, which is equivalent.

> two 16 oz cups a day

Put another way, That’s two pints of beer. That’s a lot of coffee to me.

Not really. My very boring drip coffee machine doesn't even have a notch below 4 cups.

I could be wrong, but I think the “cups” on a coffee maker are 4oz each

You’re right. 4-5 “cups” of 8 ounces is 2 - 2.5 pint beer glasses (they are 16 oz each).

It is, but maybe it helped surface a small signal that was always there but harder to identify in people who drank less, for example.

I hope not. I worked in the coffee industry and consumed 10-20 shots of espresso a day. Sometimes more.

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