Everything Guide

Your Everything Guide to Coffee

Our occasional series picks up with your morning pick-me-up

Welcome to Beantown, home of the coffee bean. 

Okay, okay, we know Boston gets its nickname from a different sort of bean. Still, it’s hard to go anywhere in the city without running into a new coffee shop, an old favorite coffee shop, or a ubiquitous chain coffee shop. And that’s certainly true on Boston University’s Charles River Campus. 

Whether it’s served hot or iced, black or “light and sweet,” caffeinated or decaffeinated, coffee is a beverage enjoyed by billions worldwide—and has been since at least the 13th century (though it’s hard to imagine what a religious pilgrim in the 1200s would make of the “DunKings” iced coffee and munchkins skewer). The famed French writer and philosopher Voltaire was rumored to have drunk 40 to 50 cups per day, a figure that would certainly move him to the top of any coffee shop’s loyalty program.

But even us mere mortals, the average joes who enjoy just one good cuppa joe a day, understand the power of good coffee: the rich, earthy aroma of roasted beans, the satisfying first sip, the energy boost when the caffeine kicks in. (And to the people who instead crack open an energy drink first thing in the morning: Why? Who hurt you?) 

The numbers tell the story: people around the world drink an estimated 2.25 billion cups of the stuff every day. How much coffee is that? It’s approximately the equivalent of all the water in 300 FitRec swimming pools.

So, come along for an exploration of this wired and wonderful world—including the world of coffee right in BU’s backyard. 

Coffee consumption at Boston University

For the coffee-curious, BU suffers no shortage of options. There’s Fuel America in West Campus, with its Americana vibes, smoothies, and roasts that are (appropriately) named after fuel—including an espresso blend called “Jet Fuel.” Cross Comm Ave and you’re at the doorstep of Caffè Nero—and transported across the world, with its moodier atmosphere, traditional Italian café menu, and upscale food options. Head east, and you’ll come across a Starbucks (or three) on your way to Pavement Coffeehouse, a campus favorite spot for a really great cup with a side of style. Sink into an overstuffed armchair with a coffee creation crafted by one of the shop’s rigorously trained baristas. And the newest addition to campus coffee is the always-bustling Saxbys cafe in the lobby of the Center for Computing & Data Sciences, where an impressive variety of coffee (and, fine, tea) drinks are on tap for students, by students. The lobby is pretty cool, too.

When you’re on the run, the University’s three major dining halls—Marciano, Warren Towers, and West Campus—offer java throughout the day, and it’s impossible to walk more than a few blocks in Boston without passing a standalone coffee shop with great brews to go.

Yes, BU is a caffeinated place. According to Lynn Cody, marketing director for BU Dining Services, each of the University’s three dining halls brews 230 pounds of coffee, or 615 gallons, per week. The three Starbucks storefronts on the Charles River Campus average 3,600 pounds of the chain’s signature Pike Place Roast per year, Cody says. 

Of course, no coffee compendium in Massachusetts worth its beans would be complete without mention of the commonwealth’s patron saint of caffeine: Dunkin’. Love it or hate it, for every 6,500 Bay Staters, there’s a Dunks. The Canton-based company boasts more than 80 locations in Boston alone. And the shortest distance between two Dunks in the city? About 120 feet. Head to Buick Street Market or the George Sherman Union for a Dunks on campus. 

Sure, but is it good for me?

“There’s a reason people wake up to a pot of coffee and not a pot of apple juice,” says Joan Salge Blake (Sargent’84, Wheelock’16), a clinical professor of nutrition at BU’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. That boost of caffeine is a powerful draw, Salge Blake says, and recent nutrition studies have shown promising positive correlations between coffee consumption and reduced risk of heart disease, cirrhosis, gout, and type 2 diabetes. 

Too much caffeine, though, can cause issues. “You might feel jittery, it might start to impair your sleep,” she says. “For some people, it would be advantageous not to drink caffeinated coffee after noon or so.”

If one cup is not enough for you, most nutrition studies agree that 400 mg of caffeine per day is safe, she says. That’s about four cups, if those are 8-oz. cups. But be careful: most to-go coffees are larger than 8 oz. “For some people who are sensitive, that will be too high, and then I’d recommend they go decaf,” she says. “Nowadays, decaf still tastes really good.” 

For an extra punch of nutrition, Salge Blake suggests adding a little milk to that coffee or latte. 

“Milk is an exceptional source of calcium, and it also provides vitamin D and potassium—all three of which are fall-short nutrients among Americans,” she says. 

But all that nutrition is easy to negate if you start heaping sugar into your coffee drinks. All those seasonal beverages (think pumpkin spice, caramel, chocolate mint) tend to taste so good because they’re loaded with sugar.

Overall, Salge Blake says, “coffee is a beautiful thing. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, and it’s nice to know that it could be healthful for you, too.”

The best part of waking up…

At this point, we should be clear about one thing: there are people who drink coffee, and then there are coffee people. For the former group, their daily cup is almost an afterthought, a means to an end. For the latter group, coffee is an art form, a formula to tinker with and obsess over. 

Competitors in the US Coffee Championships—the national competition will be held this spring in California and Illinois—would fall into the latter category. At the annual contest, baristas, brewers, and latte artists go head-to-head for glory, and for a chance to compete at the world level. 

But you don’t need to be an award-winning professional to appreciate a good brew. When Doug Holmes, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at BU’s College of Engineering, started his career, he found himself in a rural Virginia coffee desert. Already hooked on the good stuff (thanks to long hours during his graduate studies), Holmes started brewing espresso in his office with a machine he’d gotten as a gift from his wife. 

“It was good, because at the time I was drinking an absurd amount of espresso,” he says. 

The machine moved with him from Virginia Tech to his BU office on Comm Ave, where it holds a place of pride in the background of Holmes’ Zoom meetings. And while the hand-crafted drinks may have started out of obsession (or desperation), Holmes now brews coffee as a way of taking care of his colleagues and students. 

“It is for sure, I think, more of a communal thing for me,” he says. “I think coffee is a cool, micro way that you can care for someone. Being able to offer someone a cup of coffee when they come in makes the whole meeting more comfortable, and the espresso machine has ended up serving as a place to gather. You can let your guard down a little when you’re having a coffee.” 

It spills over into Holmes’ research, too. He studies something called granular jamming, the process by which disparate grains—sand, wheat, and, yes, coffee beans—are packed together with enough pressure that they become a solid mass. A vacuum-sealed bag of coffee “feels like a brick,” he says—because of granular jamming.

Coffee research. Who knew?