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Caffeine 'Dipstick' Test for Coffee

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 12, 2006 12:43 PM
from the so-you'll-know-you're-going-to-get-wired dept.
Science
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are developing a quick test for caffeine that works even with hot beverages and plan to adapt their technology to a simple ('dipstick') test that can be used to check for caffeine in a variety of drinks. The key to the caffeine test comes from llamas and camels since these camelids happen to be among the few creatures whose immune systems can produce antibodies that aren't destroyed at the high temperatures common to brewed beverages. The researchers reasoned that if they could create heat-resistant camelid antibodies that reacted to caffeine, they could potentially build a durable assay suitable for use almost anywhere."
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  • I've already got one of these (Score:5, Funny)

    by guitaristx (791223) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:46PM (#15319448) Journal
    It's a wooden stick with the words "Not enough" imprinted on it.

    • Urine tests (Score:5, Funny)

      by Seoulstriker (748895) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:11PM (#15319732)
      They should make these sticks suitable for use in a way similar to pregnancy tests: pee on the stick to see the concentration of caffeine in your system.

      Blue means not enough
      Pink means just right
      Black means you're peeing coffee.
      Brown means you put it near the wrong orifice.

    • Re:I've already got one of these (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sponge Bath (413667) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:28PM (#15319892)
      It's a wooden stick with the words "Not enough" imprinted on it.

      You use your penis to test coffee?

      • Except for the people who have medical reasons to avoid caffeine, and want to make absolutely sure that what was in the orange pot was decaf...
        • We have three coffee pots where I work:

          Black (Dark Brown): Regular
          Green: Flavored (usually Irish Creme)
          Orange: Sludge (double-dose in the filter)

          There is no decaf here. If you don't want caffeine, don't drink coffee. Even decaf has some in it.
          • Caffeine never need be "monitored" as it is not essential to life, and there are plenty of food sources without caffeine. I.e. you don't ever need a certain minimum, and you can easily survive without any. Compare this to say, sugar and diabetics.

            In terms of medical conditions where one would want to limit or prevent intake, gastritis and ulcers are very sensitive to caffeine. Believe me, I speak from experience...

  • roast paradox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yagu (721525) * <yayagu@gmail.3.14159com minus pi> on Friday May 12 2006, @12:46PM (#15319451) Journal

    Great, I first had to look up assay:

    3 : analysis (as of an ore or drug) to determine the presence, absence, or quantity of one or more components
    (from Merriam Webster).

    Anyway, sometimes when I drink coffee I seem to have an entirely opposite reaction and am overcome with sleepiness. It only happens occasionally, and counterintuitively it always seems to be a very strong brew of some Starbucks blend. After doing a little research I discovered what you might expect to be a stronger (caffeine-wise) coffee is actually the weakest.

    Turns out the darker the roast, the longer the beans have to be roasted to become that dark. And the longer the beans are roasted, the more caffeine is destroyed in the process. So, while a roast may be described as bold, but it doesn't necessarily mean it has extra kick. I prefer the bold roast taste, but have taken to preparing much lighter roasts for my morning kick-start.

    Interestingly enough, this could also explain why I am positively higher than a kite when I drink someones A&P Maxwell House Drip grind coffee. It is a bland light looking roast/blend, but it can really have a kick.

    Here's one page [kobricks.com] that answers some questions about caffeine.

    • Alton Brown did a show about coffee, and what he had to say about caffiene content vs intensity of roast agrees with you. Also, I, too often feel drowsy from a cup of dark roast coffee.

      Fortunately Starbucks on campus had a somewhat lighter than normal "Papua New Guinea" variety available for the last 2 weeks of the spring term. This coffee was both a refreshing beverage and high test fuel. I hope it is available all summer, as the Sumatra is tasty but makes me a bit sleepy.

    • Re:roast paradox (Score:5, Funny)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:37PM (#15319996)
      Anyway, sometimes when I drink coffee I seem to have an entirely opposite reaction and am overcome with sleepiness.

      Lay off the Irish coffees there, Sparky.
    • It's not *only* the darkness of the roast, but also the serving size. After all, a proper dark roast espresso is generally served in a *much* smaller cup than a good mug of a lighter roasted filter brew.
    • As a roaster (hobbyist) I find the best of both worlds can be achieved by working with a "Black and Tan" roast of sorts.

      Caffeine aside, you'll find that the lighter roasts have all kinds of flavor profiles (floral, citrus) that combine very well with those of a darker roast (chocolate, nutty*, "earthy").

      I've always enjoyed coffee, but a whole world was revealed when I started raosting it myself. It makes the best coffeehouse brew taste like sludge.

      * please, no Austin Powers jokes.

    • Turns out the darker the roast, the longer the beans have to be roasted to become that dark. And the longer the beans are roasted, the more caffeine is destroyed in the process.

      This is a true revelation. So I went running to my Merck Index, and read this about Caffeine:

      Hexagonal prisms by sublimation, m.p. 238 C. Sublimes at 178 C.

      I'm not sure at what temperature coffee is typically roasted at, but I'll bet it's not much less than than 178 C. If so, much of the caffeine is just wafting away...

  • We need a dipstick that will tell us the caffeine is up to snuff. I don't want to be short changed on my caffeine and would be happy to see something akin to a thermometer poping it's cap, letting me know my fix is just a wicked as I need it to be.
  • I already have a test...

    If after 15 cups of a beverage (non-alcoholic) in one hour I don't have the shakes, there's not enough caffeine.

    Cost: $0
    Research time: 1 hour.
    Damage to Camels and Llamas: less than .02%

  • easier test (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Friday May 12 2006, @12:58PM (#15319579)
    I've got an easier one. The black handle means 'caffeine.' The orange handle means 'no caffeine.'
    • Unless the gas station attendant is bored and looking for some fun.

      If you're careful you can ease the dosages up so the heavily caffinated come off of it and the non-caffinated start to need it.
      • It's fairly safe to assume that if you're buying coffee at a gas station you're buying it purely for the caffeine.
        • Again a lot of it depends on how much the employees like the job (directly tied to the ratio of nice friendly customers to jerks), but the coffee at the Speedway where I worked was pretty good. Not quite a fancy candy-coffee like the local coffee houses, but not a bad cuppa.

          One of the other stores where I subbed in occasion (ie lotta jerks who got switched to decaf), the coffee never tasted quite right because the machines weren't cleaned as often as they should have been nor were the grinders and percolato
    • Decaffeinated doesn't mean "no caffeine"; it just means "less caffeine". That's why it's called "Decaffeinated" instead of "Caffeine Free". The process for removing the caffeine gets out most of it, but not quite all. So if you're quitting America's (second?) most popular addictive stimulant imported from Colombia, don't look for decaf, look for caffeine free.

  • Ugh (Score:5, Funny)

    by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:03PM (#15319632)
    Friend: "Hey, that coffee smells good. What kind is it?"

    Me: (taking a deep breath) Now? Camel-flavored.

  • Oddly enough.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2006, @01:04PM (#15319638)
    I've found that most people who are that worried about the amount of caffeine in their coffee really are dipsticks.

  • So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)

    by idontgno (624372) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:04PM (#15319643) Journal
    You dip a camel... or llama... in your coffee and somehow that tells you (A) whether it's hot, and (b) whether it's caffeinated?

    And then you drink the coffee? Do you at least take the camel or llama or alpaca or whatever out of the coffee first?

    I wonder which llamas work best. Red, Mexican Whooping, or Guacanos?

    Oh, yeah, obviously, you use a "2-L" llama. I don't think most Tibetians would appreciate you using a "1-L" lama.

  • The key to the caffeine test comes from llamas and camels since these camelids happen to be among the few creatures whose immune systems can produce antibodies that aren't destroyed at the high temperatures common to brewed beverages.

    ...for Perl programmers. We trust anything that can pass the llama or camel test.

  • Hmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by Is0m0rph (819726) on Friday May 12 2006, @01:09PM (#15319705)
    I need a stick that will give me caffeine and alcohol percentages so I can get that half and half mix of Redbull/Monster and vodka just right.
    • I believe they already have a device for getting your mix right, it's called either a graduated cylinder or a measuring cup depending on whether you buy it at the chem shop or at the local grocer.
  • I think it's really cool that they said "we want high-temperature biologicals: where can we get them?" and went and found them in temperature-resistant animals. It's obvious, in hindsight, but it's a great idea.

    When Kary Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction [wikipedia.org] for amplifying DNA to detectable levels -- which is more or less responsible for the viability of genetic engineering as a discipline -- the original system was extremely expensive because it used enzymes that got cooked in the high-temperature portion of the cycle. So they went to Yellowstone and found similar enzymes from creatures that lived in geyser pools, which dealt very well with those high temperatures, and that made PCR a viable research tool. So the idea was already there, but -- camels. Dude. I don't think I would ever have made that particular leap.

    By the way, the reason they didn't just go back to Yellowstone is because while mammals and birds produce lots of antibodies, other animals either don't at all or don't in a manner that's well understood. (Or at least that's what they were teaching when I took immunochemistry.) Plants and bacteria don't produce them at all. Since an antibody is both incredibly specific and incredibly avid for a given chemical, you can stick their butts to a substrate and their front ends will stick out just waiting to attach to their chosen molecule -- much like a leech, if you've ever seen how they work when they're in water.

  • TFA: those who are highly sensitive to caffeine can feel its stimulant effects for as long as 20 hours

    Here I am on my second pint of Timmy's(*) in two hours, longing to be a sensitive type.

    (* Coffee [wikipedia.org])

  • Jane: Doctor, what does the test say? Am I pregnant?
    Doctor: No, Jane, you're not pregnant. But according to this stick you should switch to decaf.
  • When I was a grad student in Biogeochemistry some years ago, many of the students were serious caffeine junkies. Since Think-geek wasn't around to supply everything from bubble-gum to body-wash with a cafeine kick-start built in, they found another solution.

    Next to the coffee pots were all the usual additives, and nice little sugar bowl containing a mixture of pure caffeine and powdered sugar, labled "Caffeine: 100mg/tsp". The average cup of joe contains about 100mg naturally, so a couple of teaspoons of this sweetener would make expresso look like diet cola!

    The truly frightening thing was watching some students add four or five teaspoons to their double-brewed black death fluid in the mornings.

    • Speaking as someone who has tried this, I say it is not practical.

      I drink a lot of coffee, and during finals I'd have to eat caffeine pills and ephedrine (and still sleep through half my final)

      I tried to make things easier by dissolving the contents of a 325mg gelcap of caffeine in a pot of coffee. That little pill ruined my whole pot of coffee. Completely unspeakably bitter nasty chemical nausea-inducing nightmare, with only a 30% caffeine boost. I was poor and pressed for time so I drank it anyway.

      Now,

      • LOL, it sure sounds like a made up science, but it's not! Google it, you'll find it's a very active field of inquiry. Of course, I wanted to get an additional degree in Astrophysics, just so I could claim to be a Biogeoastrophysiochemist, but my wife wouldn't go for it!
      • You'll notice I talked about the other students using it. I always wondered how they insured that the caffeine was evenly distributed in the powdered sugar. I'd have felt more comfortable with a liquid solution, but they apparently didn't want to dilute their carefully-concentrated sludge with anything like water. On the other hand, since they were intentionally frying their circuits with five or six hundred milligrams at a pop, they probably wouldn't have cared if the bowl was filled with reagent-grade

  • How about a Caffeine coated dipstick? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by macz (797860) on Friday May 12 2006, @02:36PM (#15320511)
    Eliminate the coffee, and its subsequent need to be tested, altogether?

  • not just for drinks... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2006, @02:53PM (#15320685)
    it is fairly common in the evironmental remediation industry to test for caffeine in soil samples and ground water, as a way to determine location of sewer leakage.

    you see, caffeine goes right through the body and leaves as caffeine. In most of the world, there are no natural caffeine sources. So, if you detect it, there is a good chance it came from that possible faulty sewer line.

    usually these tests are done in a lab, but quick, on-site tests via something like this could provide an easy 1st pass diagnosis.

    cue the jokes, but this just goes to show that there could well be other uses of this product.
  • I thought the limit was when I saw a warning on a peanut butter that it may contain nuts. Now this. Check coffee for caffeine. Right. It is coffee. What do you think is going to be in it?

    Decaf? That stuff still around?

    If you don't want caffeine drink WATER! Whats next. A test that tells you chocolate has calories. Nicotine detector for cigarets?

    I know their is intelligent live out there because it doesn't visit us.

  • You wanna put a camel's dipstick in my what? (Score:3, Funny)

    by blamanj (253811) on Friday May 12 2006, @06:20PM (#15322272)
    Pervert.
    • durable: proof against wear and damage
      assay: test for drug existance
      suitable: useful and usable

      They were being redundant. They could have just said, "Durable assay" and left it at that.
      • OK, so what's "existance"?

        (JOKE! JOKE! Please don't flame me for spellchecking...)
      • assay: test for existence/amount of some component

        Had they said only "durable assay", the thought would have been somewhat incomplete. Saying what it was suitable for was probably the right idea. Unfortunately, they said "suitable for use almost anywhere", which is not helpful. The point they probably should have made was "suitable for use by consumers" (who won't store it safely before use and will expect it to produce accurate results in beverages from 0C to 199C).

        Step 1: develop caffiene assay
        Step 2:
    • I think this would be more useful for people who order decaf and want to make sure the waiter/clerk/whoever hasn't been a dipstick and given them regular (or some mix of regular and decaf) instead.

      I know someone who has no trouble drinking regular coffee in the morning, but just one cup after dinner means the difference between sleeping well and tossing and turning all night.

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