Caffeine Is Load-Bearing

I have never once in my adult life woken up and thought,

“you know what, today I’ll just be tired.”

Tired is a problem with a solution, and the solution is brown and hot and legally available at every grocery store in America.

Coffee in my house is infrastructure. The beverage part is incidental.

Someone on the internet did the math on grocery prices and landed somewhere around 16 cents per 100 milligrams of caffeine for instant coffee. The powder can cost more per gram than ground coffee,
but a cup needs such a tiny amount that it can still win on price per buzz.

I read that and felt so seen I almost cried into my mug.

Caffeine Has Its Own Line in My Grocery Budget

Here’s the thing about my grocery budget:

$150 a month, and caffeine is non-negotiable.
High dose. Load-bearing. Everything else on the list has to flex around it.

Protein anchors the meals, okay? Coffee anchors me.

My last Walmart run tells the whole story…

Pop-Tarts and protein waffles for breakfast, because I contain multitudes.

Mini croissants for the days I feel fancy,
which is most days…

Five Lunchables,
because sometimes dinner is just vibes and cheese.

Goldfish, the Xtra Cheddar kind, obviously.

Two boxes of Barilla Protein+ penne plus parmesan,
because the protein has to come from somewhere and it might as well be pasta.

Whole milk.
Two coffee creamers. Cold brew concentrate.
Caramel syrup.

Dr Pepper.

SweeTARTS.

and finally … salt, because I’m an adult.

That run came to $79.57 with the driver tip, which leaves about $70 of my $150 food budget for the rest of October.

And when I look at how much of the monthly budget can disappear into coffee concentrate, creamer, soda and the general pursuit of remaining conscious, the cold brew math starts getting disrespectfully persuasive.

Which brings me to my current fixation:

a giant cold brew maker.

I want a pitcher. A vessel. A Sunday operation.

I want to brew a whole situation,
put it in the refrigerator and coast through the week like a woman with a plan.

Is Making Cold Brew at Home Actually Cheaper?

This is the question that started the spiral.

Cold brew (specifically) is almost comically simple to make,
I’ve very recently come to realize…. Coffee grounds. Water. Time.

Strain it, refrigerate it, and suddenly the bottle of concentrate that I keep
buying has some serious competition.

So, lets keep it real, the exact cost depends on the coffee you buy and how strong you brew it, but making cold brew at home gives me control over the part I actually care about:

how much coffee I’m using, how concentrated I want it, and how often I have to buy another bottle.

It also turns coffee from a recurring convenience purchase into something I can batch.

I love a batch.

The cold brew maker I’ve been eyeing is the Primula Burke Deluxe Cold Brew Iced Coffee Maker.

It has a glass carafe, reusable mesh filter and comfort-grip handle.
It holds 1.6 quarts, so we are talking roughly 51 ounces of caffeinated infrastructure at a time.

That feels appropriate.

That link is an affiliate link, which means I may earn a commission
if you purchase through it. Thanks, babe <3 

The appeal is pretty straightforward. I can brew at home, decide how strong I want it, pour exactly what I want each morning and stop paying someone else to make the same decision for me.

And then there’s the sugar….

Coffee and Sugar Are a Terrifyingly Good Product

We have to talk about sugar because caffeine does not travel alone in my life.

Coffee plus sugar is the actual addiction.
The duo. The toxic little polycule keeping me upright.

This is where my silly little grocery calculation runs directly into an enormous beverage industry.

Soda.
Energy drinks.
Bottled coffees.
Sweet tea.
Coffee-shop drinks that somehow contain dessert,
caffeine and a name like a YA novel.

Caffeine, sugar, convenience, routine and great branding make one hell of a product stack.

The American Heart Association lists regular soda, energy drinks and sweetened coffee among common sources of added sugar, okay?

Now… buckle in with me, love…. 
A regular 12-ounce soda can contain around 10 teaspoons of it.

Which is mildly horrifying information to receive while holding a Dr Pepper. 

I still love a sweet coffee.

Joy stays.

I just like knowing who is holding the caramel syrup….

There is something very different about standing in my own kitchen
and deciding what goes into my coffee.I can make it aggressively sweet one morning. I can use half as much the next. I can change the creamer, change the ratio,
make the coffee stronger or realize I have created
something legally classified as pudding.

I get to decide.

That matters more to me than pretending I’m about to become an unsweetened-black-coffee person.

I know her.

I respect her.

Yet… she does not live here, nor pay my bills. :P 

How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?

There is, unfortunately, a point where the bit ends though, sorry. 

The FDA says that for most adults, 400 milligrams of caffeine per day is an amount generally not associated with negative effects. Sensitivity varies by person, and the amount of caffeine in coffee can vary quite a bit too.

So “high dose” cannot mean “pour until I can hear electricity.”

Rude, but fair.

In a wellness sense, just as much as economic,
making coffee at home actually makes that easier to think about…
I can pay attention to the coffee I’m using, the serving size and
what else I’ve consumed that day instead of collecting mystery caffeine
from three different drinks and hoping my cardiovascular system enjoys surprises.

The Cheapest Caffeine Is the Caffeine I Control

So here’s where I’ve landed.

I buy the coffee.
I brew the pitcher.
I measure my own sugar like a woman who respects herself.

And nobody’s marketing team gets a vote.

There’s something deeply funny about responding to the beverage industry by vertically integrating my own caffeine dependency, but hey babe,here we are.

My addiction is mine to be accountable for, even as menial seeming as caffeine.

I just up and decided to run it like a business instead of letting a business run it, period. 

Infinite cheers and (actual) wellness,
Mona

P.S.

The cold brew maker I’m eyeing is the Primula Burke Deluxe Cold Brew Iced Coffee Maker. Yes, that’s an affiliate link. If I buy it, you’ll hear about it. Oh, you wont stop hearing about it.