Spending your caffeine allowance

November 4th, 2008

This lovely little turn of phrase was stolen from Gwilym when I offered him a cup of the cascara. It sort of stuck in my head and made me think about how I choose and don’t choose to spend mine.

One thing I’ve noticed is that my day to day tolerance varies. Some days I can just drink a lot more coffee. Gwilym raised the point that sometimes work annoyingly eats into your allowance – you are working the bar and tasting as you are going to make sure everything is running fine, and then by the time you get a break and could sit down and enjoy a cup your allowance is all spent and you just want a glass of water (or weirdly I quite fancy a coke – which just makes no sense whatsoever, but hey ho…).

Three days a week I am out delivering or visiting customers and I taste at least one or two shots everywhere I go. As a consequence I’ve noticed I spend less time messing around and pulling shots for myself at work, and the most worrying downside of this is that I am not making many drinks at all these days. I am very grateful when people tolerate me getting behind their bar for a couple of hours and let me get the latte art eye back in. (It amazes me that despite understanding the process of latte art pretty well I can still get a bit rusty if I do nothing at all for a week.) Beyond this I can help but feel a little frustrated that despite the amount of espresso I am tasting I don’t feel I have developed my understanding of it as much as I want to, but now we are back in blend development so I can enjoy focusing on that again for the next month.

So coming right back to where I began – I worry that people won’t enjoy the cascara as much as they should because they’ll be worrying about spending their caffeine allowance that they’ve saved up for a cup of something delicious. What compounds my worry/frustration is that the cascara is genuinely tasty. I really did expect it to be a bit of a novelty drink, but I think everyone who tastes it reacts the same – very pleasantly surprised.

I’ve decided not to kill the blog, and I have a rant or two lined up that will appear in the next few days, and for the people who were asking about brewing the cascara – I will do a short video soon.

How do you spend your caffeine allowance? Do you worry about it as much as me? Leave me a comment!

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  • http://www.tristanstephenson.com Tristan

    I’ll vouch for the cascara being interesting. I think you said it when I tried it Jim, but the closest thing I can compare it to is rosehip.

    I was actually thinking about incorporating the cherries into a sig drink somehow, but have gone off the idea now because, to be honest, I don’t think the flavours will match all that well.

    Caffeine allowance? I usually live for the moment and try whatever I can until I reach the limit. Anything after that just wasn’t meant to be.

    I know what you mean about coke though, it’s one of the few things in life where absolutely nothing else will do.

  • Marcy

    With all the comparisons of coffee often made to wine, do baristas not do like sommeliers or wine tasters and fall on the sip-and-spit routine? On my opening shifts, that’s what I do because there is no way I can drink 20+ double shots throughout my shift. It’s only when I actually take a break or finish my shift and sit down that I drink it… so I guess that’s how I plan my caffeine allowance (which is about 3 doubles/day). Although, there are times, when the shot is so exceptional, I can’t help but not spit and suffer the consequences of yet another sleepless night ;)

    I just wish brown lipstick suited me… there’s just no getting away from espresso-stained lips, is there?

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  • http://www.relishwadebridge.co.uk Hugo

    In the last few months I’ve become a little over excited by filtered single origin beans…
    On top of that a nice man with a big drill took the base off my spare PF and I’m getting to play naked on my Plus4U and Mazzer.

    The upshot is I’m overspending like a loon in an effort to taste some of the other lovely stuff that’s out there…. is there such a thing as a personal caffeine credit crunch on the horizon?

  • http://www.maristakaffe.dk Maria

    yes, I think about caffeine allowance too. From a health perspective, you can’t ignore that too much caffeine simply isn’t healthy, particularly if you’re stressed out. Bad cocktail that is. Caffeine stays in the body for a long time – it takes almost 24 hours for the body break down the caffeine one cup of coffee! No one can survive on one daily cup of course, but setting a limit (as with everything else we consume) is sensible. And what’s more, it raises awareness of what (quality-wise) is in the cup and makes you enjoy that even more. That’s what I think anyway:-)

  • http://www.taylor-st.com andrew

    So that I can taste coffee all day I spit most of each espresso out, just drinking a little of each one.

    It is hard to be inconspicuous when doing this in front of customers though.

  • Ishida

    Nice to see you back Jim.

    I thought I was the only one who had to drink some Coke just after a cupping session. It’s strange how I feel the need of a cup of Coke after I overdue my caffeine allowance. That’s weird… Is there any scientific study about it ?

  • http://www.thecoffeeinstitute.com Chris D.

    I have found that the old banana trick has done amazing things for subduing the effects of caffeine on my system. Part of my job is to run espresso trials once a week for reformulation. We go through 50 espressos and I drink at least part of half of those. A banana in the morning doesn’t keep me from using the restroom, but it keeps me from climbing the walls.

  • Cris Fuzaro

    I dont think much about my caffeine allowance… when i realize its usually too late…i’m already climbing walls!But i did notice it changes from day to day. About caffeine metabolism i saw somewhere that it takes about 45 min to kick in and the half-life of caffeine—the time required for the body to eliminate one-half of the total amount of caffeine consumed at a given time—varies among individuals according to factors as age, liver function, pregnancy, some concurrent medications, and so on…. and that in adults, caffeine’s half-life is approximately 3–4 hours… does anyone has any other info about it?
    Glad u r back Jim!

  • Sebastian Storholm

    I’m getting more and more worried that something is seriously wrong with me since I have not felt much anything from drinking excessive amounts of coffee daily for almost 2 years. I just got into home espresso about a year ago, and since I’ve been pulling up to 12-15 double shots some days, with several additional cups of drip coffee on top of that, while other days drinking nothing but a cup of white tea. It’s quite disturbing to not get any effects (or withdrawal symptoms) while having a caffeine intake that is on the border to a harmful dose. Weird…

  • Healthy Coffee Girl

    Has anyone heard of Healthy Coffee?

  • http://www.star-espresso.co.uk Star Espresso

    Having coffee can be fun and enjoyment. Good quality of coffee increases our excitement and makes us feel better.