How much caffeine is in boxed cold brew coffee?
Recent studies suggest that consumers have become more focused on regulating their intake of caffeine. Therefore, they’re interested in how much caffeine their favourite beverages contain. Interestingly, many of today’s debates are centred on how much caffeine boxed cold brew coffee, a largely untried packaging format, holds.
Bag-in-box (BiB) packaging is as old as most popular beverage packaging formats. However, its use in the coffee industry is a recent trend largely fuelled by the rising demand for cold brew coffee. Market researchers have attributed the growth of bag-in-box packaging to increased beverage demand, predicting a yearly growth rate of 6.9% from 2024 to 2030.
So, how much caffeine is in boxed cold brew coffee, and how can brands clearly communicate this to consumers?
I spoke to Marc Hindman, the Senior Director of Brand Strategy at Rook Coffee, who weighs in on the ongoing caffeine debate and shares his company’s experience with boxed cold brew coffee.
The caffeine content in boxed cold brew coffee
Rook Coffee is over a decade old and has eleven locations across New Jersey. Its exclusive offering of quick-serve and cold brew coffees has made the brand unique. Even the brand’s hot coffee isn’t based on espresso machines.
“We use a high-quality proprietary process that allows us to make quality pour-over coffee in about 60 seconds,” Marc reveals. However, the brand mostly thrives on its cold brew offerings. “We offer a handful of stable cold brews daily, and we also have lots of limited-release cold brews that are a huge driver of business for us.”
Borrowing from his eight years of experience in coffee operations, Marc says that brewing ratios largely decide the caffeine levels in cold brew. “The reason you are going to see higher caffeine levels is because of the increased concentration of coffee in the brew method,” he explains.
Cold brew is an exception to the golden brewing ratio for a cup of coffee, which the National Coffee Association (NCA) says should be one to two tablespoons of coffee per six ounces of water. Instead, to achieve a more concentrated brew, cold brew uses a larger amount of coffee per volume, which can be diluted later to achieve the desired taste.
Understandably, Marc can’t reveal the exact ratio they use at Rook Coffee. However, he hints that it’s usually much heavier than it would be for a hot cup of coffee or the traditional iced coffee. He says the caffeine content of the brand’s takeaway cold brew coffee ranges from around 200 mg to 375 mg per cup.
To explain the variation, Marc says the caffeine content partly comes from the recipe. “One of our best sellers is the New Orleans Style,” he explains. “It’s blended with chicory, which doesn’t have a caffeine content, making it our lowest caffeine content cold brew, even though the taste is very strong.”
Rook Coffee recommends a serving size of 4 ounces for its bag-in-box cold brew, using a one-to-one ratio with water, milk, or another beverage of choice. If you add ice, you can fill a 16-ounce glass. The caffeine content for your brew will, therefore, vary based on the serving and recipe, just like it is with the brand’s takeaway offerings.
For now, Rook Coffee has a 3-litre bag-in-box containing 100 fluid ounces of cold brew that yields around 25 servings or 200 ounces of diluted beverage.
How long does boxed cold brew coffee last?
When left unopened, cold brew coffee should remain fresh until the expiration date shown on the package.
“With a closed package, your shelf life is finite but longer because there’s no light and oxygen [interacting with the beverage],” Marc adds.
However, once opened, the beverage is at the mercy of light, oxygen, and microorganisms–all of which can only be controlled by the type of packaging used. Of course, storage matters as well. Anything less of a refrigerated environment will only make things worse.
Having used both bottles and boxed cold brew coffee, Marc says the latter delivered much better results, especially once opened. Neither of the brand’s packaging uses pasteurisation or preservative processes.
After carrying out in-house tests, Marc reports that bottles have a two-week shelf after being opened, while the boxes lasted up to six weeks before they ended the experiment. “The test finished at six weeks. We didn’t take it any further, but we are in the process of testing it again to see how far boxes can go,” Marc adds.
What to consider when offering boxed cold brew coffee
Bag-in-box has a richer history in the wine industry than anywhere else. In Australia, for instance, it’s viewed as an ‘icon’ that made wine more accessible to the common person when very few could afford it.
For a while in the US, people also associated the box with inexpensive wine, an observation Marc is familiar with. “If you mentioned a box like that, people only thought of cheap wine.”
Fast-forward to today, and the story is different. BiB is gradually becoming the go-to packaging format for premium products, from high-quality cold brews and wines to cocktails and even water. For a business looking to adopt the cold brew box, one must explore the best practices for implementing such a packaging solution.
“For us, I think a major challenge is working on a small scale,” Marc reveals. Compared to the brand’s bottle business, BiB is relatively younger because it’s only sold through e-commerce. “We are not producing as much,” he says, which is not really working to the brand’s advantage.
“Anytime we find ourselves in that situation, we don’t get the economies of scale. This extends from purchasing the actual cold brew box material and the bag material to the filling–which is a very manual process, basically one bag at a time.”
Sizing can also be a challenge if it’s not done thoughtfully. Marc warns that bigger BiB sizes aren’t for everyone. “Larger formats are sort of value play for some brands, but not the most cost-effective offering on the cold brew side.” Rook Coffee also sells a 4-pack on e-commerce, so it has had to discount it more heavily because the overall volume of coffee is larger.
BiB also offers a broader canvas to work with. This includes branding and design to handles and dispensing taps. “We are just applying labels on the outside of our stock cold brew box, but are in the process of getting it printed,” Marc explains.
At Cold Brew Pak, we offer innovative bag-in-box cold brew packaging solutions. Our ergonomic on-tap dispensing system maximises every drop, while the exterior’s corrugated kraft paper ensures superior protection. We’ll customise your cold brew box further with bespoke handles for ease of use and a resilient film structure that guarantees freshness for your product for as long as possible.
Images courtesy of Rook Coffee.
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