I, too, am a bit surprised by how low volume a daily dose is for many people here! I usually go for 3 shots in the morning, 1 cap for my wife, 1 double in the afternoon. I usually go with 17g in, so 85g total each day.

I like and need the pick me up. But this is mainly a hobby, I'm drinking for taste and the enjoyment of the process. My thought process is as follows, especially with my new equipment this year:

First shot: OOO I'm awake and that was a good shot!
Second Shot: How can I tweak? Crap, that channeled a bit
Third Shot: Tweaked and good pull, delicious! Should stop there
Afternoon shot: This better be as good as the morning, cause this is it

I usually stop at 1:30pm to wind down. If, hypothetically, 400mg of caffeine is the limit, then I still have room for another shot, if I'd like (average 80mg per shot?). Either way, my caffeine consumption for the entire day is well less than a single venti coffee at Starbucks (~415mg)

I do 14 grams per cup and with steamed milk twice a day, and with food, i.e. with croissant in the morning, and with some French bread and chocolate in the afternoon around 3PM.

Jimjam168 wrote:I usually go for 3 shots in the morning, .... 1 double in the afternoon. I usually go with 17g in, so 85g total each day.

... If, hypothetically, 400mg of caffeine is the limit, then I still have room for another shot, if I'd like (average 80mg per shot?). Either way, my caffeine consumption for the entire day is well less than a single venti coffee at Starbucks (~415mg)

I think there may be some confusion. A single shot is traditionally 7g, but up to 10g; a double was considered 14g, but is commonly 16-18g today. Triple baskets are sized around 20-22g (7g x 3 = 21g).

So, yes, about ~80mg of caffeine per shot of espresso (based on a 10g single shot - a 7g single shot would be ~56mg). But if you are pulling "17g shots" you are actually pulling a 17g double shot (that is, two 8.5g shots loaded in one double basket).

So, you're drinking 6 shots in the AM (3 doubles) and 4 shots in the PM (assuming your reference to your afternoon double represents 2x 17g shots).

85g of coffee is ~680mg of caffeine, about 70% higher than the hypothetical recommended upper limit for daily caffeine consumption. And about 1.66 Starbucks Venti drip coffees.

This was interesting to see. Being from a country of coffee adicts I thought my 56-70 grams per day would be close to the average, but clearly not. And stopping to drink coffee at 3 pm I have no problems to fall asleep at night - at least I have convinced myself that is the case

dsc106 wrote:
So, yes, about ~80mg of caffeine per shot of espresso (based on a 10g single shot - a 7g single shot would be ~56mg). But if you are pulling "17g shots" you are actually pulling a 17g double shot (that is, two 8.5g shots loaded in one double basket).

The sites I've looked at state 80 mg of caffeine for a double shot, not a single. Where are you getting your specs?

I think Ben's specs are close to truth. This paper (see Table 2) quotes around 150-160 mg for a regularly extracted serving of espresso prepared with about 18 grams of ground coffee (100% arabica).

The same paper also reports measurements of caffeine content from commercially obtained espresso shots and espresso-based drinks. The interesting thing is that there is a lot of variation in caffeine content from café to café, with some modern double shots well over 200 mg per serving. Even the Italian 7-8 gram shots are mostly well over 100 mg (probably because of robusta-containing blends).

Personally (not that this is scientific in any way), I've stopped going to some third wave coffee shops that only serve doubles, as the caffeine jolt is too much to be comfortable.

Interesting, I meant "double", just an espresso session. I hadn't seen these numbers Henri shared. Thank you for this material! Sounds like there's quite a bit of variance, but 80mg per 17g would be woefully on the low end of an estimate.

I will answer in a different way:

I typically make and drink only one coffee beverage per day. Whether it's pour over or lever espresso, the total extraction is about the same, roughly 22-23%. So 15g coffee in, resulting in about 3.4g coffee per beverage, plus/minus

13g am Aeropress and a 15g afternoon 'spro.