Coffee Beans

I tasted coffee beans for the first time in my life today. All in the name of learning about how caffeine affects our brain. Professor David Presti, who teaches “Drugs and the Brain,” at Cal, brought a whole bag of Peet’s Dark Roast Coffee Beans and passed them around for the class to taste. I’ve never tasted coffee before, let alone coffee beans, so this was a new experience. It was crunchy, kind of over burnt and somewhat bitter to the tongue. But I ate another bean anyway. I can see why folks love it so much. The effect was pretty immediate. I was more awake or maybe the immediate effect was due to the the bitterness.

The aroma, I’m familiar with, with my grandparents and most relatives all habitual coffee drinkers. My parents managed to kick the caffeine habit only recently after suffering the withdrawal symptoms of headache and fatigue. The coffee aroma is one I associate most with my grandparents. My Srinivasan grandpa who lives in Chennai, gets up before everyone else, receives the milk from the milkman, boils the milk and then brews a fresh batch of coffee decoction in a manual coffee filter. I’ve rarely seen grandpa in the kitchen otherwise, he really wants his coffee made the right way I guess. While in Chennai, I  wake up to the smell of coffee (and other things being prepared in the kitchen).  South Indian coffee looks different from the coffee ones sees in the coffee makers in the offices and restaurants here. It’s thicker as it has some chicory as well. Whenever my grandparents have visited the US, they’ve  brought coffee powder with them, as they did not prefer the local US brands. My other late Raghavan grandpa was also a coffee aficionado. He liked his coffee black without any sugar even and it had to be brewed just right. The coffee was not be be put on the stove or microwave directly to warm, rather the decoction had to warmed up in a hot water bath, else the taste would be spoiled.  During one of his visits to the US, he had one of the specialty coffee shop guys give him sample tastes of almost 2 dozen types of coffee beans before he found he kind of liked. My grandma would say that on a train journey, my  grandpa would keep stopping the coffee vendor who walked up and down almost every hour or so and ask for refills. At weddings, the coffee tray makes a regular appearance throughout the day.

Chemically, caffeine is one of the methylated xanthines. It’s an antagonist for the inhibitory neurotransmitter Adenosine. Inhibitory means slowing down of neural activity (or firing them up) while an antagonist is a molecule that blocks the action of the neurotransmitter at the receptor.. When Adenosine binds at the receptors it causes you to be calmer (helps sleep)  in addition to vasodilation or opening up of blood vessels (which allows for more oxygen flow). By blocking adenosine, caffeine causes the stimulating effects that is associated with coffee such as alertness, increased heart rate and increased BP.

One cup of 7 oz coffee or tea contains almost 100 mg of caffeine. But the giant sized drinks sold these days are almost 12oz, so extrapolate the caffeine. Apparently the so called decaf still has 3mg of caffeine. Energy drinks like Rockstar and RedBull have 120mg of caffeine and the tiny 5 Hour Energy Drink has a whopping 200mg.  Students have gone to the ER after a few of those high powered drinks - increased heart rate.  

A side note of interest was the Peet (of Peet’s Coffee) is from Berkeley and started his company in the 1960s. (Peet’s is now owned by a German Company.) Peet even showed the Starbucks guys how to make coffee.

Being Halloween, Prof Presti opened with a picture of a giant pumpkin stuck on top of the spire of the Campanile (Sather Clock Tower) in 2000 as part a Halloween Prank. The pumpkin had a giant “Live” carved into it. Wonder how they managed to get it up there. Apparently it was quite the spectacle till maintenance managed to get it down.