- Today, we're gonna be testing the caffeine levels
in a bunch of ready-to-drink canned coffee products
from around the world,
and I'm really interested in the results
that we're gonna get.
Now, in the past, we've used our caffeine analyzer
to look at how you brew coffee
might impact the caffeine levels.
We've looked at whether there's big variance in the caffeine
on high street chains in the UK
when you just order an espresso.
And today, I think this one has been heavily requested,
and it should be a ton of fun.
Now, the nice thing about canned ready-to-drink products
is they're not impacted by brewing.
Once you get it, you should know how much caffeine is in it,
and it should be consistent every time you buy that product.
Well, in theory, anyway.
Now, we've chosen four different countries
and acquired some different cans from those places.
But me testing this alone is not enough.
We're gonna add a little twist.
We're gonna make it a little bit difficult for me too.
So, this testing will be done blind to me,
and then I'm gonna taste these
and see if I can tell, just from tasting,
which ones are the most caffeinated
and which ones are the least caffeinated.
The idea there is, well, you don't have a caffeine meter,
but you do have a sense of taste.
And so, if I can do it, you can probably do it too,
and you can have a pretty good idea
of how much caffeine you're ingesting,
you know, based on what you're tasting.
Or maybe you'll just have no idea 'cause I'll have no idea?
Either way, it's gonna be very interesting.
Now, we're gonna start with some cans
and bottles from the UK.
Controversially, there's some Starbucks product here.
I don't know how much they've regionalized the product.
We bought this here in the UK,
so it's going into the UK one.
It isn't made in the UK,
but I think it's imported to the UK.
But they make this stuff all over the world,
there may be variants, we just don't know.
Then we're gonna go to Japan,
the first place that I experienced canned coffee.
There's canned coffee vending machines all over the cities.
It's amazing.
And we'll taste a bunch of product from there
and see if that's more caffeinated than the UK
or less caffeinated than the UK.
Then we're gonna go to Korea,
another big increasing kind of cold brew, canned coffee,
or pouched coffee scene?
I don't know, I've never seen this before.
I'm looking forward to trying it.
And then, of course, we have to end with the USA.
This has been a massive kind of boom industry in the US.
Ready-to-drink coffee, canned coffee,
however you wanna describe it.
It's a really big deal.
It's really popular.
How much caffeine's going on in these drinks?
We're gonna find out.
I'm not gonna give you, like, a flavor assessment.
That's not what this is about today.
I'm not judging the quality of these drinks,
I'm just trying to guess how much caffeine is in them.
That's it.
Maybe one day we'll do a giant taste-off,
but today is not that day.
This is just about the caffeine.
Now, if you're not familiar with the caffeine analyzer,
and maybe, why would you be?
This is what we have here.
It's very nice. It's very clever.
It's the analyzer itself.
But what you need to do the analysis
is actually a little pack of stuff,
for want of a better word.
There's the stuff in here.
Let me show you what's inside.
Firstly, very clever little pipette.
This lets you take a fixed amount of liquid
in this little straw here.
Very useful.
Let's get some coffee now.
We're gonna add this fixed amount of coffee
in the little straw bit to the reagent, like so.
Marvelous.
Then we're gonna shake for 10 seconds,
and then we need to put this little chip into it.
Now, you can see on the chip just here,
a little space to put the liquid.
So we take a little bit of our reagent mix,
put it on the chip like so,
and then we can perform our reading.
(App loading our reading)
So here we have a chlorogenic acid reading,
which we don't really need, as well as a caffeine reading.
Very precise. Down to the milligrams per deciliter.
Deciliter being 100 milliliters.
The only downside of this thing
is that it costs about five pounds per test,
which is a little bit expensive
but, we think, very much worth it.
So, at this point, these have all now been tested,
but I don't know the results.
And I'm not gonna lie, having poured them out,
I'm tempted to kind of go off color a little bit.
That's definitely gonna sway me.
But I'm gonna start tasting.
It's amazing how a little sugar
makes you forget all about the caffeine.
This is definitely tricky.
I'm gonna get these quite wrong, I think.
And I'm gonna say this is our most caffeinated one.
And you're gonna immediately think, "You're an idiot.
"You're just picking the one that has,
"you know, no milk in it.
"That's why you think it's strong."
But if it's been brewed with lots of water,
I have learned in the past
that the more water you brew with,
the more extraction you can do.
So I'm putting you in first place
as the strongest beverage over here.
Second, I think I'm gonna go with Jimmy.
Don't know why, there's just a bit more
coffee flavor in this.
I'm actually gonna put this Starbucks in last.
I think you're gonna go into third place.
And I think these are the same.
But, of course, I think these are the same.
They look the same.
Do you know I'm gonna go with
a little bit more in the caramel than the straight latte.
Caffe Latte.
This is my proposed ranking from strongest to weakest.
Let's find out how I've done
Results, please.
Thank you very much.
United Kingdom!
(tears into envelope)
So exciting.
Well, damn.
Well, I got one right!
First place with about 112 milligrams
of caffeine for the whole can.
So if you wanna get into it,
the machine we have works in deciliters, so per 100 mLs.
So it's 56 milligrams of caffeine per 100 mLs
for the Minor Figures, which is interesting.
And it's quite a lot higher than second place,
which is the Costa Latte, which is, in fact, down here.
I had it in fifth.
Not doing very well at this game.
Unsurprisingly, though, Costa Caramel, in next.
So here, 39 milligrams per 100 mLs,
here 36 milligrams per 100 mLs.
So, pretty similar.
Then we're into the Starbucks Tripleshot.
You'd have thought this would be up the top, Tripleshot.
But 30 milligrams per 100 mLs, so only 90 for the whole can.
Then we got Jimmy's, 27 milligrams per 100 mLs.
So, 76 in the whole thing.
So, not a big caffeine dose there.
And then, at the bottom, the Frappuccino coffee drink.
This definitely threw me.
This comes in at 11.85 milligrams per 100 mL.
So this whole bottle has about 1/4, little bit more,
but not even 1/3 of the caffeine of this one here.
So that's a pretty big range.
I think that's super interesting and extremely surprising.
Now, again, some color variation on these ones from Japan.
I'm not used to seeing milky coffees from Japan.
Most of the ones I've tasted in Japan
have been canned black coffee.
I wish we had some more of these.
Anyway, let's start tasting
with, by far, the thickest-looking black coffee
I've seen in some time.
(sniffs and tastes)
Oh, wow.
I'm just gonna go ahead now
and say that's got the most caffeine in it
'cause that's by far the strongest beverage, no doubt.
Whoa!
In comparison, incredibly chill.
I would almost be tempted
to put that at the bottom, at this point.
Ooh, no. Maybe you.
These two, I think, are gonna be down the bottom.
Very sweet cappuccino.
I'm gonna say...
Yeah, I'm gonna go...
Then you.
I think that's my order.
So I think the incredibly strong BOSS Cafe.
Am I supposed to dilute this down?
I feel like I am.
I AM supposed to dilute this down.
one to four. That makes sense.
Didn't read the bottle beforehand.
That's gonna be intensely caffeinated.
I will say really, really hard
to pick the differences in milk drinks,
even going by sort of strength.
Let's get the results.
Thank you very much.
Japan!
To no one's surprise, in first place: BOSS Cafe
The concentrate here, at 109 milligrams of caffeine
per 100 mLs or, in total,
actually only 370 milligrams of caffeine,
which I think would fall under
my sort of daily allowance for caffeine.
Now, second place, by strength, was, in fact, POKKA Vanilla.
At 42.85, it just edges ahead of third place.
Because in third spot, in fact, it was BOSS Black.
42 milligrams per...
Or 42.5 per 100 mLs.
So, not wildly caffeinated,
but, you know, a decent amount of caffeine.
Interesting.
I had it a little bit lower.
My experience over the years has been intense flavor
mostly coming from roasts, like dark roasts,
in canned Japanese sort of coffee drinks.
But actually, that's a decent amount of caffeine.
But a small can,
so you'd only be like 78 milligrams in total.
So you'd be good for, you know, quite a few of those a day.
Maybe five of those.
But, you know, would be just a little bit more than that.
Coming in in fourth place is POKKA Cappuccino.
Where are you?
This one here, there we go.
At least I got this one as more caffeine
than the milk coffee.
They're very close, though.
So POKKA Cappuccino, 39.65 milligrams per 100 mLs.
And here, 34.34 milligrams per 100 mL.
So very close.
There's a little bit of a range between the milk drinks.
Not a huge one.
I don't know if that's enough to really worry about.
You've gone from, say, 80 milligrams in a can
up to about 100.
So, not a big range or something I really worry about.
Interesting though.
I wish we had more of the canned black coffees from Japan.
I just need to go to Japan and buy all of them,
hundreds of them, and have a giant head-to-head tournament
and taste them all and find out which one's the best.
That's a dream that I have
that, one day, I hope will come true.
Let's have a look at the cold coffee scene in Korea.
I have no idea how this is gonna go.
They are all black coffee,
so that should be more interesting.
In theory, this should correlate to strength,
but I'm not as good at sort of detecting strength
in cold coffee, especially darker roast coffee.
(James sniffing)
That feels punchier.
And that feels punchier still.
But I might be tripped up by roast level there a little bit.
I'm so thrown by that.
Okay, moving on.
(James sipping)
(gulps) The sugar has arrived.
Mmm.
Okay, this is really difficult,
but I'm gonna go with strongest.
Second strongest.
Hm.
(exhales) These, they could all be the same.
I'd be very surprised if there's a big difference.
I'm gonna put you in fourth.
Honestly, don't know.
My proposed ranking of strongest
to least strong.
This was not quite guessing,
but I don't think I've done better than random,
if I'm honest.
Let's find out.
Thank you so much.
Korea. (clears throat)
Okay!
I've not done very well.
Now, the range is interesting here.
So remember, this is per 100 milliliters.
So, number one...
Where did I have you?
(laughs) This one is number one,
in fact, so I'll put you back up here.
So, 41.8 milligrams.
But a near identical amount to the BTS.
McNulty, where are you?
I've done terribly here. Came in third.
Dropping down to 33.9 milligrams per 100 mLs.
Wow. Okay.
T.O.P. 25, almost identical to you,
which is almost identical to Size-Up,
coming in at 22 milligrams per 100.
And then Ice Cafe way down,
16.26 milligrams of caffeine per 100 mLs.
So, like, 30 milligrams in this whole pouch.
Very gentle compared to, I think, the biggest portion
was the BTS, actually.
Where are you?
270 mLs.
Nine calories.
Yeah, but 111 milligrams of caffeine.
That pretty thoroughly disproves any idea
that humans are good at caffeine detection
or, more specifically,
that I'm any good at caffeine detection.
I did not do well.
Surprisingly low levels of caffeine, I would say,
across all of these, which I think is probably notable.
Now, before we get to the US canned coffees,
I do wanna talk about the experiences I've had
buying these coffees online
because you use a bunch of different websites to get them,
and occasionally, I do feel like I've just
kind of lost control of my personal information.
I don't really know where it's gonna end up.
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Now, I'm not gonna lie, going into this,
I just presume all of these have more caffeine.
I have no justification for this whatsoever
other than, you know, I know how cold brew gets made,
and a lot of these are kind of based
on cold brew-style things.
I've had a few of these over the years,
but - can I guess the caffeine content?
No idea.
That feels quite caffeinated.
As does this.
There's a syrupyness to these.
A little bit more gentle maybe.
Oh, are you just the straight...
Mm.
I'm gonna just say, on average,
I think these have more caffeine.
Hmm. I don't know.
I'm gonna start here.
(James sipping)
Making a few guesses.
(James sipping)
This really is not very scientific at all.
Ultimately, my guess here is only gonna reinforce the fact
that I don't think you, as a consumer,
can easily tell the caffeine content based on tasting it,
which I think is really interesting
and actually really important.
It's time for the results, please.
From the USA.
Coming in at the top, Stumptown.
It tasted strong, but that is 81 milligrams per 100 mLs,
247 milligrams for a single can.
That's a good dose of caffeine.
Second place, the Blue Bottle, 77 milligrams.
So, again, pretty hefty dose.
Smaller can, 182 milligrams for the whole can,
which is very close to the La Colombe,
which comes in at 67 milligrams per 100.
It does actually say on this 180 milligrams,
we measured 180.4 milligrams.
But that's almost identical to the Wandering Bear,
which I had up at the top.
It was not.
Got the two at the bottom right, which is interesting.
They just tasted a little less strong.
Wandering Bear with 67 milligrams,
so 220 for the whole dose.
Two of those, and you're done for the day and a bit more.
Sail Away about 59, 60.
Good-sized can, though, so 200 milligrams there.
Now, the bottle size here is obviously
not designed to be consumed in a single sitting,
but it's 42 milligrams of caffeine per 100 mLs.
Sip-for-sip, this has seemingly twice the caffeine of this.
Now, I know there's issues with sample size, and selection,
and all that stuff, but just based on what we tasted,
interesting to note that the average
for the UK caffeine per 100 mLs was 33.7.
In Japan, it was about 53.
In Korea, 29. So similar to the UK.
And the US, I think, notably higher
at sort of 66 on average.
So, more caffeine per beverage
if you're buying a kind of US-style product it would seem.
Certainly the specialty-type ones, anyway.
For me, a really surprising tasting.
I don't know what I expected,
but not the kind of variation that we've seen.
But now I wanna hear from you.
Do you check how much caffeine is on the can
or on the bottle before you buy it?
Is that important to you?
Would you check it if it was there
on every kind of caffeinated beverage?
I kinda wanna see it on a can of Coke.
I wanna see it on a Red Bull.
And I wanna see it on canned coffee, if I'm honest.
Caffeine is a psychoactive drug.
It's the world's most popular one.
But, you know, it is something we kind of take blind,
and I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.
And I know that sometimes we just can't know.
You can't know how much is in an espresso very easily,
but you absolutely can know how much is here,
and I think we should.
But let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.
Let me know if there's a country whose cold brew
or canned coffees we should, you know, check out
and test in future.
Let me know other things you want us to test
with the caffeine meter.
We can do more.
We will do more.
In fact, maybe we'll look at cold brew one day:
The science and extraction of caffeine in cold brew.
But I make no promises.
But for now, I say thank you so much for watching,
and hope you have a great day.