TimEggers wrote:I hate to say this but I used to average 15 cans of soda an afternoon at work besides my pot of coffee at home before going in.

Yes. I know!

It's as if caffeine never existed for me. I can drink 8 or 10 espresso's at work one day and then nothing the next day and I don't get headaches or any signs of withdrawal.
I enjoy espresso late at night and it doesn't keep me awake.
I guess it's because espresso contains so little caffeine compared to filter, drip brewed coffee.

HB wrote:I sometimes skip coffee when traveling simply because I would rather have no coffee than lousy coffee. There's a chance of a mild headache in the late morning. Any caffeine intake however small negates the effect (e.g., piece of dark chocolate, half a diet coke).

Like Dan, I'd rather abstain than drink bad coffee. I spent two weeks in India this spring and drank tea by choice, because the tea was far better. Fortunately no symptoms of caffeine withdrawal when I abstain.

OldVillain wrote:I guess it's because espresso contains so little caffeine compared to filter, drip brewed coffee.

A common misconception. According to everyone's favorite source of infallible wisdom (the Web ), caffeine levels in espresso are only slightly lower than drip coffee. For example, about.com claims

Double espresso (2oz) 45-100 mg
Brewed coffee (8 oz) 60-120 mg
Instant coffee (8 oz) 70 mg

and the Coffee and Caffeine FAQ states

Drip 115-175 mg
Espresso 100 mg (1-2oz serving)
Brewed 80-135 mg

Perhaps more reliably, Kenneth Davids' Coffee Review claims

The average cup of American-style coffee contains about 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine; a properly prepared demitasse or single serving of espresso 80 to 120 milligrams.

It appears that espresso has about 20% less caffeine than drip coffee, per serving. So, how many espressos do you drink daily at work?

one day of skipped caffeine usually gives me a headache, sometimes its much worse than others depending on how much coffee i drank the day before, 2 days will leave me stumbling and dizzy, 3rd day i start getting over it.

a couple of weeks ago, i thought i was starting to get sick, due to allergies and dehydration, so i decided i wouldnt drink coffee until i felt better. BIG mistake!
i ended up in bed for 2 days before i finally figured out that it was mainly a caffeine withdrawal.

RapidCoffee wrote:It appears that espresso has about 20% less caffeine than drip coffee, per serving. So, how many espressos do you drink daily at work?

Some days 8 to 10 and when I was working at our coffee plant at Orbe in Switzerland, it was 10 to 12 Nespresso's.
I went back to the UK at the weekend and was on 1 or 2.
No withdrawal symptoms.

I will bring back a very dead thread but I just went through this.. I recently purchased a new grinder and got myself on a coffee subscription. I ended up ordering too much coffee and as a result, we have bags and bags of the stuff in the freezer.

So I upped my consumption from 2-3 doubles to 6 sometimes 8 a day.. At first no problem.. but after two weeks of this, especially on Mondays (I'd drink most of my espresso on weekends) I noticed I'd wake up depressed, a little dizzy and really irritable.. Not a fun guy I was.

I could not figure it out ! Searched the web, asked friends.. no idea. Finally thinking something was wrong, I asked my doc. His first question was "how much coffee do you drink". So I told him and he looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

Ah, ok then.

Well the withdrawals were nasty ! Only now I am getting back to normal.

Now that I think about it, that wasn't too bright of me.

J

I've ramped back on coffee consumption over the last several months. There was a time a while ago when I had some nasty headaches when I didn't drink coffee one weekend. Now I'll usually have about 250 ml of pour-over coffee in the morning and either an 18 g double espresso in the afternoon or 200 ml of pour-over at night.

Last Saturday, I forgot to make my normal morning coffee in the excitement of going to the Bluegrass for the Greenbelt concert in Oakland and ended up not having any coffee or caffeine at all that day until we got home that night. No ill effects.

Conversely, I did have an espresso fest one Saturday morning a while ago where I started with a Vac Pot of coffee and kept on pulling shots. I was feeling good until I took things too far and ended up feeling nauseous from too much caffeine. I guess I've lost my tolerance for high doses... I would have to go into training to build up to be a serious coffee cupper.

My coffee consumption varies pretty wildly by day. I am a big guy and not too affected by caffeine, and skipping coffee for a few days doesn't really bother me very much. As a rule, I do not drink coffee for the caffeine boost, though I have in the past when I was getting up for 8am lectures running on fumes. Lately I have stopped drinking coffee late at night because I thought it might be affecting my sleep, but it hasn't made much of a difference.

I'm kind of curious to know how many of us have got over-caffeinated from the coffee hobby. I went to the tasting event at Social Coffee in Toronto last year, and it took me a few hours before I figured out I should probably be sipping and spitting most samples. I am not sure how much espresso I drank, but I could barely drive home I was so jittery. My heart was racing and I felt kind of nauseous and paranoid. It was quite an unpleasant experience, actually.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a home-roasters dream event at Sweet Maria's that included hands-on roasting on many different home-roasters set up in the warehouse as well as cupping of the sample roasts we'd brought in as our homework. People also brought in their favorite coffees (I took a CoE) and everyone was drinking coffee during the roasting before the cupping.

I had brought a few snacks, but hadn't had a solid lunch and when I left I had to find someplace to get food in me because I was just too jittery. Caffeine can be a real pain sometimes.