Why are different kinds of coffee different in psychoactive effect? (ears, feeling)

[letsgetsomeanswers]

Or is it just me?


Years back I used Folgers Instant for years and it had this really strong psychoactive effect. It was very strong in like mood , cognition ,and creativity areas.

Then I was forced to quit the brand because their quality control got really bad, the line develop a very bad chemical taste that made me sick and I retried for some time and it was still bad so I finally quit.

I don’t know what the heck was wrong with that but I later found out they were sold to a new company, Smuckers I think. I don’t know it there was a connection.

But afterwards I tried different brands ,both instant and brew. And they were really all different to me in feeling. Some made me felt weird and bad . Some better than others.

I even tried buying beans from this market chain called Fresh Market where they had coffee beans. But I got bad result from brewing their Arabica beans. Just gave me bad feeling like this weird feeling or something.

I used pour- over and French press methods. But anyways I eventually settled with brew brand Café Du Monde because they were just better than other brands in psychoactive effect, just better mood, cognition but still quite enough below Folgers Instant.

And another thing I discovered about brewing coffee is that if the coffee is brewed too short or too long, the psychoactive effect gets distorted as in goes bad. my bad experience were like 3 minutes and 10 minutes. And the better effect were around 4-4.5 minutes.

I don’t get it , aren’t all coffee beans the same excluding staleness vs. freshness issue? How can different brew brands vary so much in psychoactive effect?

Or is it just me? Anyone else got similar experiences?

This is kinda annoying and puzzling to me. I was trying to break reliance from a single brand when I was experimenting with brewing from just coffee beans but that didn’t go so well. And I found that I couldn’t really duplicate the same psychoactive effect of certain brew brands. Why is that? Is there some trade secrets that would be hard to know by the average joe?

[Utopian Slums]

I have never heard of this, although I don't doubt it could be possible just like different strains of cannabis. This would have to be in addition to the caffeine which is the only (currently known) psychoactive ingredient in coffee. Or maybe something about the chemicals used in cultivation?

This i know to generally be true:

DARKER coffee beans usually has LESS caffeine because the caffeine is roasted out.
LIGHTER coffee means that the beans are not roasted as long and thus they maintain the caffeine.

It is the total opposite of what most people think they are getting with "strong" (flavored) coffee.

[Woof]

I'm guessing it's mostly about different caffeine levels.

[gypsychic]

I am sensitive to coffees as well, and have been for years. I prefer low-acid medium roast organic coffees, if possible. I used to think it was the caffeine that bothered me, but I have found that a lot of decafs are actually worse than regular. I think it has to do with quality of beans, pesticides and who knows what else.

I only drink coffee in the morning, and I stick to those that are not overly strong, made via the pour-over method (best way to make coffee, IMO)