Most view espresso coffee as having a high caffeine content. We experience this often enough at the Safari Cup. ”Give us a double shot of espresso in my drip coffee. I need the extra caffeine”.

It’s difficult to explain the look of disbelief on the customer’s face when they’re told that the caffeine is in the drip coffee & relatively very little exists in espresso. It’s sort of like the look I get when I’m trying to explain the game of cricket to North Americans. Shock & disbelief are the best descriptives.

Espresso coffee has a very rich coffee flavour. Many confuse this taste thinking it to be the “caffeine kick”. But that’s not the case. The two main reasons for the lack of caffeine in espresso coffee is the type of beans used for espresso & espresso’s quick extraction process.

As we know from last week’s article, only very small amounts of high quality Robusta beans are added to Arabica beans to produce good espresso coffee. Arabica beans generally contain about half the amount of caffeine found in Robusta beans.

A good espresso shot is extracted over a short period in time - around 25 seconds - too short to extract a significant amount of caffeine from the beans. It’s the drip coffee, with its relatively longer filtration process that is more effective in extracting the caffeine.

Oh, by the way. Don’t call it “expresso”. Its “espresso” – emphasize the “sss” sound. Just trying to make you sound cool when you’re at your favorite Coffee Shop.