What is Caffeine?
Caffeine is a naturally occurring compound that is found in over 60 species of plants. Although we usually associate caffeine with coffee, it is also found naturally in leaves, tea, and cocoa. Since we are a coffee roaster, we will be focusing almost solely on the coffee aspect of caffeine!
Coffee comes from a plant (classified as a fruit to be exact!), so if we look at it from that lens it makes sense that caffeine would occur naturally in coffee beans. The caffeine in the bean (while the bean is growing) actually is produced to ward off pests and other predators, but on the flip side also attracts pollinators. The caffeine is addictive to pollinators (who would've thunk!), which helps in spreading the plant far and wide on the coffee farms.
If you want to get super technical about it, caffeine's chemical makeup consist of 8 carbon, 10 hydrogen, 4 nitrogen, and 2 oxygen atoms. In every cup of coffee you drink (~12 oz), there is around 150 mg of caffeine.
Coffee comes from a plant (classified as a fruit to be exact!), so if we look at it from that lens it makes sense that caffeine would occur naturally in coffee beans. The caffeine in the bean (while the bean is growing) actually is produced to ward off pests and other predators, but on the flip side also attracts pollinators. The caffeine is addictive to pollinators (who would've thunk!), which helps in spreading the plant far and wide on the coffee farms.
If you want to get super technical about it, caffeine's chemical makeup consist of 8 carbon, 10 hydrogen, 4 nitrogen, and 2 oxygen atoms. In every cup of coffee you drink (~12 oz), there is around 150 mg of caffeine.
Natural or Synthetic?
Even though caffeine does occur naturally, there are ways to synthetically produce caffeine. You will see these synthetic forms of caffeine in things like energy drinks, sodas, gum, etc. This synthetically added form of caffeine is not the healthiest way to consume caffeine by any means. Usually always you will see added components to these drinks, such as tons of added sugar. There are a million studies of how "caffeine can be bad for you", or "caffeine will make you live longer". I am not a scientist, but I do know that naturally occurring caffeine alone, can be very good for you! It is very nutrient rich and has tons of vitamins. BUT! With any good thing, having too much of it can be bad for you. It it recommended that a person have no more than 400 mg of caffeine a day. This is the equivalent of around 3 (8oz) cups of coffee. This is not a hard and fast line, everyone's bodies are different, but overall, this is the range of when to caffeine can be too much.
Light Roast or Dark Roast, which has more caffeine?
This is kind of a trick question and kind of not. Let me explain.
When you roast coffee, you are not roasting out caffeine. One of the main components of roasting is you are cooking moisture out of the bean, which directly effects weight (there are numerous chemical changes of the bean happening during the roasting process, which we will go over in another section, but none of those are directly related to caffeine content). Each bean of coffee carries the roughly the same amount of caffeine, especially if they are grown from the same farm. With that said, weight is important here. Like I said earlier, roasting moisture out of the bean directly corelates to the weight of the bean. The darker and longer you roast, the lighter the bean will be, the lighter and shorter you roast, the heavier the bean will be.
This comes into play depending on how you weigh your coffee out in the morning (or anytime) before you brew the coffee. If you use, for example, a measuring cup, or tablespoons, the light roast coffee are smaller in size and have less surface area then the dark roast beans, so you will have more coffee beans in the measuring cup, which equals more caffeine!. But, if you weigh your coffee, for example, in grams, then your end brew will have more caffeine with the darker roasted beans then the lighter roasted beans. This is because the darker roasted coffee beans are lighter in weight (due to the longer roasting time), so to get to specific grams of coffee, there will be more darker roasted coffee beans then lighter roasted. Ex, 25 grams of coffee may have 45 light roasted coffee beans, but 49 darker roasted coffee beans. More beans= more caffeine!
When you roast coffee, you are not roasting out caffeine. One of the main components of roasting is you are cooking moisture out of the bean, which directly effects weight (there are numerous chemical changes of the bean happening during the roasting process, which we will go over in another section, but none of those are directly related to caffeine content). Each bean of coffee carries the roughly the same amount of caffeine, especially if they are grown from the same farm. With that said, weight is important here. Like I said earlier, roasting moisture out of the bean directly corelates to the weight of the bean. The darker and longer you roast, the lighter the bean will be, the lighter and shorter you roast, the heavier the bean will be.
This comes into play depending on how you weigh your coffee out in the morning (or anytime) before you brew the coffee. If you use, for example, a measuring cup, or tablespoons, the light roast coffee are smaller in size and have less surface area then the dark roast beans, so you will have more coffee beans in the measuring cup, which equals more caffeine!. But, if you weigh your coffee, for example, in grams, then your end brew will have more caffeine with the darker roasted beans then the lighter roasted beans. This is because the darker roasted coffee beans are lighter in weight (due to the longer roasting time), so to get to specific grams of coffee, there will be more darker roasted coffee beans then lighter roasted. Ex, 25 grams of coffee may have 45 light roasted coffee beans, but 49 darker roasted coffee beans. More beans= more caffeine!
So how does it work!?
Here is a helpful video on how exactly caffeine effect our brain: