Wow, I guess I am a light weight @ 19g-20g total per day! (one double shot, or one drip brew). Are people not concerned with max caffeine intake recommendations?

If I'm not mistaken:

- 1g of arabica coffee generally contains about 10mg of caffeine, and best estimates suggest we extract approx. 80% of caffeine when brewing (so, 8mg caffeine per 1g of coffee)
- Hence, estimates are that for every 10g of coffee, a brew contains ~80mg of caffeine (@ 80% caffeine extraction rate)
- So, every 20g double shot or drip brew = ~180mg caffeine

The general recommended limit is 400mg caffeine a day. From there, they use to say ~6 shots per day was ok (if on the high end), but that was based on smaller standard Italian shot sizes of around ~7g (thus coming in under 400mg). Today, it would be more like 5 single shots (50g coffee) to hit 400mg. So today, 4-5 18-20g "shots" (actually double shots) is about 8-10 single shots a day. 70g of coffee is likely around 560mg of caffeine and 90g may be around 720mg of caffeine!

Well, everyone's body is different - I'm just surprised those who drink so much caffeine aren't bothered by it? Knowing 400mg caffeine/50g is the max recommended limit, I go for ~20g a day and when I'm extra tired, I bump it to a triple or quad shot (or a second afternoon brew) to clock in around 40g.

40 grams a day.

The average Dutch person drinks 2,4 cups per day or 8.5 Kg of coffee per year. That includes non-coffee drinkers, so do the math.



This research states some countries even consume more in terms of kilograms per person (I guess it depends on # of grams per cup, in The Netherlands it's mainly drip coffee).



With 4-5 cups a day I'd consider myself slightly above average. Switching to 18g dosed espresso's is where my consumption in grams took a leap.

My consumption has gone down. I used to consistently go through 40 g. per weekday (20 g. filter a.m. and p.m.) + ~90 g. in total on the weekends for batch brew. I cut out the p.m. filter coffee a while back for no good reason other than general busyness, as caffeine wasn't interfering with my sleep, and now weekend batch brew has been taken over by my DD hazelnut-loving family, so I tend to use Cometeer (frozen) on the weekends. Work and running my son to and from baseball practices/games are the main obstacles here. I need to carve out more time for coffee exploration.

15-16g in the basket, two or three times a day.

Ypuh wrote:The average Dutch person drinks 2,4 cups per day or 8.5 Kg of coffee per year. That includes non-coffee drinkers, so do the math.

8500g/365 days = 23.2g/day. At 2.4 cups, that means the cup size they are using is a 9-10g cup of coffee.

In the netherlands, according to one poll, 70% of people drink coffee everyday, but 85% drink 1-6 times a week. If we extrapolate this, and if we're aggressive and only count 75% of people as coffee drinkers, zeroing out 25% of the population, we might increase the average consumption estimate per person by 33%. So, let's say around 30g/day per person.

Taking Finland at 12.5kg/year = 34g/day. If we again assume 25% of the population doesn't drink any coffee (possibly too aggressive given the culture?), that may be around 45g/day per person.

With 50g of coffee being about ~400mg of caffeine, it would appear the average person in these countries is still comfortably below the max recommended limit, drinking somewhere around 200mg-350mg of caffeine.

Ypuh wrote:With 4-5 cups a day I'd consider myself slightly above average.

If you compare those very top countries to the rest of the globe, they are averaging well over triple almost everyone else in the world. But, even just comparing against the very high outliers of Netherlands/Finland... With 4-5 18g doubles, that's 72g-90g per day - it would appear you are at least double the average person in the highest consuming nations on earth. That's a LOT of caffeine!

"Cups" doesn't mean a thing (A cup is 8oz... so... 8oz of espresso? Cold brew concentrate? Diluted cold brew? Strong drip? Weak drip? etc.) All that matters is grams/day. It sounds like you aren't experiencing any adverse effects, but it would personally make me too nervous to dose that much on the regular.

dsc106 wrote:Are people not concerned with max caffeine intake recommendations?

...The general recommended limit is 400mg caffeine a day.

Where are the data that demonstrate >400mg consumption of caffeine in the context of coffee drinking results in an increased risk of mortality or significant negative health effects?

It might be fine, there is nothing conclusive. While there are numerous indicators of possible longer term impacts one can peruse, as I understand, there is nothing conclusive.

I imagine a big part of this is having a small sample size to draw from of people consuming such high amounts of caffeine, and even with a larger sample size, it would need to be a controlled study spanning many years.

(1) 18g shot usually straight sometimes in an americano or occasional milk to start my day after my morning workout.

Then at lunch I make a 20g Aeropress brew.

Here's a weird thing: I've noticed that if the coffee is of poor/bad quality (like at work....), I drink much more of it, than if it is of good quality (at home).

At home I drink 3 espresso's (3x15gr.) per day during the weekend.
During the week I drink 2 AeroPresses (2x14gr.) per day and very often I share one with my wife (1x14gr./2).

At work this is often 5 or 6 cups per day (I'm lucky I still have to work from home. )