Agreed, if I drink a lot of strong coffee fast, I’m basically shaking for the next hour or so.
My solution is dilution. I put about four cups worth of coffee into the filter, and then 1.3 L water in the tank. The result is very weak coffee that you can drink throughout the day, keeping you mildly caffeinated and hydrated simultaneously.
If you’re making coffee for people who can’t accept watery coffee, just brew normally and add water afterwards. The Italians in the office will curse your name, but that’s just a sign you’re doing it right.
The Italians in your office would have wanted espresso!
That's actually an interesting point, we're generally talking about coffee as if it's all the same, but I see people here talking about instant grounds, drip coffee and then there is espresso, I'm sure they all work out quite different. If you're used to grinding your own beans you'll know different beans have different caffeine amounts, and different extraction methods all have different yields.
Where I am it's all espresso, thanks to Italian immigrants bringing over stovetop espresso kettles in the 40s and jumpstarting our now incumbent coffee culture. I've never even seen a drip coffee machine, it's espresso machines in petrol stations, offices, cafes, restaurants, people's homes.
If I pull an espresso shot for too long it's going to have more caffeine in it than had it pulled really quickly, even though it's the same amount of coffee/water solution in the cup. So one person's four cups a day is rarely going to match another persons four cups a day. I'm sure it's the same for instant coffee brands or grinds too, when you take it all into consideration it's going to be hard to know what caffeine intake anyone has.
Right but there are standard serving sizes so “four cups worth” is a well-defined amount, subject to cultural variations I’m sure.
What you call stovetop espresso we call mocha, which is decidedly not espresso in my book. I also find the amount of caffeine in espresso laughable, but I’m also Scandinavian and we drink some pretty dark coffee apparently.
At least where I am, mocha is coffee + chocolate + milk, which is strange, because another common name of the stovetop espresso machine is a "Moka Pot", named after the Yemeni city of Mocha. A confusing fun fact for the day.
My main point was that there isn't a well defined amount of caffeine in any measure of 'four cups'. If you have four cups of Moka Pot coffee and I have four cups of your dark coffee, I'm going to be buzzing while you'll you be cursing the Alfonso Bialetti for daring to invent the device. Even if you consider 'shots' of coffee to be a measure, each bean/blend/grind will deliver different mounts of coffee. I think it's just worth noting if we're trying to discuss the effects of caffeine, as people tend to speak in cups per day. It sounds like you would be very disappointed with four cups of my coffee!
My solution is dilution. I put about four cups worth of coffee into the filter, and then 1.3 L water in the tank. The result is very weak coffee that you can drink throughout the day, keeping you mildly caffeinated and hydrated simultaneously.
If you’re making coffee for people who can’t accept watery coffee, just brew normally and add water afterwards. The Italians in the office will curse your name, but that’s just a sign you’re doing it right.