Nornagest comments on Open Thread for January 8 - 16 2014 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: tut 08 January 2014 12:14PM

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Comment author: Nornagest 14 January 2014 08:54:39PM *  3 points [-]

Well, energy drinks don't have that high a caffeine content compared to coffee -- a can of Rockstar has about 160 mg in it, which is comparable to a strong cup of coffee, but it's got somewhere around twice the volume. Red Bull is more like 80mg. So if your office coffee isn't scratching your itch, you're probably craving something other than caffeine, maybe even just sugar. I'd recommend experimenting with that a bit.

If you want to make good coffee easily, though, I recommend a burr grinder + French press or drip cone (I prefer the standalone kind, though a drip coffeemaker won't kill you), and the best-quality beans you can find: Philz is a good Bay Area choice. Toss a couple tablespoons of beans per cup of coffee into your grinder, grind them at a medium-fine setting, transfer to your coffee production system of choice, then add boiling water. French presses tend to make stronger coffee with more complex flavors, but add a timing parameter -- you can oversteep or understeep coffee made with a French press, while drip coffee is pretty idiotproof.

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 15 January 2014 02:23:57AM 0 points [-]

Well, energy drinks don't have that high a caffeine content compared to coffee -- a can of Rockstar has about 160 mg in it, which is comparable to a strong cup of coffee, but it's got somewhere around twice the volume. Red Bull is more like 80mg. So if your office coffee isn't scratching your itch, you're probably craving something other than caffeine, maybe even just sugar. I'd recommend experimenting with that a bit.

This issue isn't sugar, because I drink sugar-free energy drinks. On reflection, perceived weakness of office coffee may be in my head / based on my first couple poorly-made cups. So I may just switch back to that.