Dialing in the Right Amount of Caffeine
If you are part of the "All Caffeine - all the time" crowd, then you might want to skip this month's Espresso Elucidations...
People vary widely in their tolerance to caffeine. Some people simply cannot drink fully caffeinated coffee. As for me, I scarcely feel anything from a double espresso, yet if it's an hour or two before my bedtime, it'd be a mistake to drink the full strength espresso.
If you've never tried any of our decaf offerings, I can assure you that they would exceed your expectations. To me, decaf used to mean that evil chemically-tasting brew in the orange-rimmed glass flask served up at the local diner. Decaffeinated espresso is fortunately nothing like that. While I've not done any side-by-side comparisons, I would venture that most people could not identify which were decaf in a blind taste test.
Hoping that I've convinced you that decaf is worthy of consumption, let's ask if you actually need to drink straight decaf? Maybe you don't. My second cup of the evening is usually a "half-caf" — a shot of regular and a shot of decaf. It's very easy to do.
Let's consider all the alternatives: Robusta beans contain approximately twice the caffeine of Arabica beans (2.2% vs. 1.1% on the average). Therefore a traditional blend of approx. 20% Robusta and 80% Arabica blend will contain 20% more caffeine than a 100% Arabica offering. Decaf pods have a negligible amount of caffeine.
Approximate Caffeine Percentages
Perhaps just having a cup of 100% Arabica instead of a blend will reduce the caffeine enough for your needs. Or, following our above statistics, a cup of Arabica+Decaf has a bit less caffeine than a cup of Blend+Decaf.
Be sure to check out our wide variety of
decaffeinated espresso pods at www.podmerchant.com.
We now have inventory on the very cool Nuvo Koala in
chrome. I wish we had the ability to photograph this machine in a manner that does it justice, but properly photographing mirror finish items is very difficult and expensive. So we have to make due with the images our distributor makes available. I can assure you that the picture you see here and at our site does not do justice to this machine. You can read our full write-up on the Nuvo Koala.
We are still waiting on a large sea shipment from Italy with new products. Look for espresso pods from
Izzo, as well as return of Lucaffé Colombia, which we have been out of since before Christmas 2005. We are also looking into carrying Lucaffé's Blucaffé coffee.
We've simplified and increased our PODcast subscriber discount. Now it's a 10% discount across the board on all products, including machines.
(Note: Only one coupon per subscriber per issue. This coupon cannot be used with other coupons. PODcast coupons are only valid for PODcast subscribers — we check use of coupons against the subscriber list. Coupons expire 35 days after the newsletter is published, or when the next issue is published, whichever comes first):
10% off your next order. — Enter code: XXXXXXXX (
subscribers only)
