The Fresh Ride

This Saturday morning we woke up to the surprise of 2 inches of snow on the ground. Expected, partly, because the forecast called for it, but unexpected, because as anyone who lives in ski towns knows, if you’re expecting the snow, it probably won’t come. Don’t expect it, and there it is: Magic—even in October. My soccer-obsessed kid couldn’t wait to suit up for his last game of the season on the powder covered grass with a bunch of his little buddies. Parents were a little more reluctant in their enthusiasm as they stood bundled up on the sidelines, sporting an overwhelming lack of appropriate footwear. When snow comes in October, and you need to be somewhere by 10 a.m. the only easily accessible shoe choices are things like flip-flops, sandals, running shoes, or clogs. Avoiding clogs at all costs is my advice, but you know that about me already.

Dozens of moms and dads stood in support of our little Beckems and Beckemettes, clutching onto their travel mugs and paper cups filled with a hot coffee of some kind. One of my friends said to me, teeth chattering as she grasped her little plastic mug, “thank god for caffeine”. I had to agree. Caffeine rocks. I assure you the fans’ cheering was mostly measurable by the amount of caffeine each person had ingested to that point. God only knows it’s hard to be a cheerleader when your toes are freezing. I know there’s a lot of this and that about it…it’s good one minute, bad the next, ok in moderation, a drug of the devil, a juice of the gods. I can’t possibly play ball in the caffeine good or bad debate, as I took the road back in college to study business instead of science. Since I don’t have a lab of my own, and can’t report my own findings, I’ll share with you some of what I’ve learned. (There are lots of places you can go to research actual milligrams present in each cup, so don’t base your caffeine consumption on what I’m about to say, and if your eye pops out of your head due to caffeine overdose, it’s your fault, not mine.)

So here’s some stuff that might surprise you:
• A 6 oz cup of coffee prepared as drip coffee has about 60% more caffeine than a 1 oz single shot of espresso (that’d be comparing serving to serving). Extracting your coffee as espresso only pulls out about 60% of the total available caffeine in the volume of ground coffee, due to the short 25-30 second brew cycle. So it’s true, you get less caffeine when brewing your coffee as espresso, serving per serving, compared to drip.
• There are two main cultivated species of coffee, simply put, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica beans are what all the quality coffee brands use…otherwise known as the good stuff. Robusta is what you’ll find in the cheapo-budget brands and lots of gas stations across the country. Robusta actually contains about 50% more caffeine than its much lovelier cousin, the Arabica species. I guess it’s not a mistake that crappy coffee and truck stops go hand in hand. It’s the high-test stuff that gets us through that 10 hour stretch in the Nevada desert that gives us the most caffeine per cup. If you drink the quality stuff, which will taste way better, you’d have to pee more, and we all know that’s just not cool on a road trip. Unless, of course, you’re stopping for more coffee anyway.
• Different coffee varietals contain slightly different amounts of caffeine, and can vary season to season. Brewing factors can vary also, even in your own kitchen, so no two cups are exactly the same.
• The darker the coffee is roasted, the less caffeine usually ends up in your cup. Comparing the same coffee bean, and all else being equal, the darker a coffee is roasted, the puffier the beans become, and therefore the fewer beans are used when you use your measuring scoop. It’s a slight difference, but contrary to what people believe, roasting darker doesn’t bring on more caffeine. The bean has what the bean has, and you can’t “grow” more caffeine in a coffee bean by roasting it darker. So sad but true, those black beans that you think pack more of a punch just because they’re darker, really don’t.
• Black tea has about 1/3 the caffeine as the same amount of drip coffee.
• Decaffeinated coffee still contains a few milligrams of caffeine.
• Caffeine can be found all over our diets in foods, drinks, candies, and medicines.
• Caffeine rocks. (Oh sorry, that’s just me and the rest of the soccer moms and dads talking).

Fun times in the snow...