Not all of us are blessed with the ability to handle caffeine, which means we may want to keep tabs on how much we’re consuming. But loads of different foods have coffee flavoring, including ice cream, so does coffee ice cream have caffeine?
Generally, coffee ice cream does have caffeine in varying amounts. You may assume that you ingest around 1 to 50 mg of caffeine per serving of ice cream, much lower than the daily recommendation set by USFDA (no more than 400mg).
So there you go, I’ve given you the answer in a nutshell, without making you have to trawl through pages of content just to get the info you were looking for, you’re welcome ;-).
But, if you’re interested in educating yourself with a bit more detail about caffeine in ice cream, and other things including whether you should be looking for decaf coffee ice cream, keep reading.
Does Coffee Ice Cream Have Caffeine?
In general, most coffee ice cream does have some caffeine. The actual caffeine content will vary, though, depending on factors such as processing, types of coffee used, and the intensity of the flavors.
This is because different ice cream makers use different styles of coffee to make their products, which would mean differing caffeine intensity and levels.
Generally speaking, if you have an ice cream that has been made actually using brewed coffee, rather than made using a coffee extract, the ice cream made using the coffee extract would usually have more caffeine, but even then, it still depends.
If you insist on a number, there is one, but it’s over a huge range, from roughly 1 to 50 mg (milligrams) of caffeine in a single serving of coffee ice cream. I know it’s vague, but as we’ve ascertained, the amount of caffeine in coffee itself varies, it then varies depending on how the coffee has been extracted from the bean, and it depends what a single serving is to you, too.
My Dad, for example, his single serving of ice cream is the whole carton! ;-). If you have three scoops of coffee ice cream that contains caffeine, then that’s going to contain roughly three times the caffeine vs one similar sized scoop. Wow, I’m a genius!
To be fair, even 50gm isn’t a “lot” of caffeine, generally speaking.
Putting things into perspective, a single cup of Grande Americano at Starbucks alone would have around 225 mg of caffeine.
You can also compare the caffeine content to what the USFDA (US Food and Drug Administration) recommends for daily caffeine intake.
The FDA recommends healthy adults avoid consuming more than 400mg of caffeine a day.
We all appear to have different caffeine tolerances, and we all probably have different eating and drinking habits that affect the total amount of caffeine we’re consuming, too.
So for example, let’s say your tolerance is 400mg per day, and in excess of this you notice the common side effects of consuming too much caffeine, such as headaches, heart palpitation, disrupted sleep and the “jitters”.
If you already have 200mg of caffeine in your daily diet in things like chocolate, medications and beverages (keeping in mind that many cold and hot beverages contain caffeine, not just coffee), then you only have a couple of hundred mg of tolerance remaining.
I think this is why some people believe they have a really low caffeine tolerance. I think some people forget that coffee isn’t the only food or drink that contains caffeine, they have one big cup of coffee, and then feel like they’re overloaded on caffeine, and they conclude that they have a low caffeine tolerance, while it may be the case that they have a relatively “normal” tolerance, but they’re just consuming more caffeine on a daily basis from things other than coffee.
How Much Caffeine Can You Find In Popular Brands of Coffee Ice Cream?
(Caffeine per 60ml scoop)
Häagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream 12.95 mg
Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Buzzbuzzbuzz 17.75 mg
Talenti Coffee Chocolate Chip 5-8 mg
Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee Ice Cream 15.1 mg
Oatly Coffee Frozen Dessert 20.4 mg
Let’s look at some popular ice creams available in grocery aisles and their caffeine content.
Häagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream
Häagen-Dazs is probably the first name you think of when it comes to ice cream. And yes, their coffee ice cream is incredibly popular too, for good reason, it tastes amazing! Well, taste is subjective of course, but I think many people will agree that Häagen-Dazs is ice cream heaven.
There’s some good news for you if you’re a fan of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream, their coffee flavored ice cream has a low caffeine count, at around 12.95mg per scoop. That’s over 30 servings in a day to reach the FDA limit (if you’re not consuming caffeine from any other source, of course).
Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Buzzbuzzbuzz
Go to any frozen aisles in your grocery store, and you’ll see Ben & Jerry’s tubs staring back at you. If you’re lucky, you’ll see their Buzzbuzzbuzz, coffee ice cream with espresso bean fudge chunks, yes please!
The caffeine count for their coffee ice cream is slightly higher, but it’s still labelled as just 17.75 mg of caffeine per scoop, so about 22 scoops daily to reach the FDA’s recommended daily caffeine intake limit (again, assuming that ALL your caffeine consumption was coming purely from the ice cream).
Talenti Coffee Chocolate Chip
Talenti may be better known for its Gelatos than its ice creams, but their coffee chocolate chip ice cream is given a range of 5 to 8 milligrams of caffeine per serving. This is a very low figure, so if you’re very caffeine sensitive, or if you have a normal tolerance but you like to max it out with actual coffee and you only have a tiny bit of room left for your coffee flavored dessert, this would be a good choice, at least where caffeine content is concerned.
Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee Ice Cream
The Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee Ice Cream is a more affordable option, vs the more premium brands including Ben and Jerry’s or Häagen-Dazs, and a single scoop of Turkey Hill Colombian coffee ice cream should load you with around 15 mg of caffeine, according to the brand.
Oatly Coffee Frozen Dessert
If you’ve gone non-dairy, or if you just prefer the taste of Oat based ice cream vs dairy (I’d recommend trying it if you haven’t, it’s a different taste, some will love it, some maybe not, but you’ll never know unless you try), Oatly frozen dessert is a great alternative. Instead of cow’s milk, Oatly is made using oat milk instead, to point out the obvious ;-). For this reason they call it a “frozen dessert” rather than ice cream. Their listed caffeine content is a bit higher than some of the others, with a single scoop being rated at a very specific 20.4 mg of caffeine.
Why Do Some Coffee Ice Cream Contain More Amount Of Caffeine?
There are many reasons why some coffee ice creams have more caffeine:
- Coffee beans used
- Amount of coffee used
- Coffee flavoring used
- Ice cream formulation
Coffee Beans & Caffeine Content
There are many different species of coffee trees, and coffee beans are the seeds of the fruits of these trees. They’re not beans at all, they’re seeds of the coffee cherry, they’re just called beans because they resemble beans.
There are only really two species of coffee that are used commercially, Arabica and Robusta.
There are lots of different varieties of Arabica, all which can have slightly differing levels of caffeine, but Robusta, generally speaking, contains around double the caffeine content of Arabica.
Amount of Coffee Used
This is down to pure, simple mathematics. The more coffee is used to make the ice cream, the more caffeine the ice will have. This applies to ice cream production of all scales – from your small roadside ice cream stall to massive factories.
Some ice cream makers may use more coffee to help mask deficiency in other areas, such as milk quality. These coffee ice creams are likely to have more caffeine.
Coffee Flavoring Used
There are many types of coffee flavorings used to make coffee ice cream. Some smaller producers may simply use instant coffee granules, or shots of espresso. Larger operations would usually opt for coffee extracts.
In general, coffee extracts have more caffeine per volume than regular coffee or espresso shots. This means coffee ice cream with 10 ml of coffee extracts would have more caffeine than 10 ml of espresso.
Ice Cream Formulation
Finally, there’s also the formula to think about. Different coffee ice cream makers usually have their own formula set to produce the best-tasting coffee ice cream. This means different makers may have different ratios of:
- milk
- coffee
- sugar
Some manufacturers may make healthier versions of coffee ice cream, using less milk and sugar. In this case, they may use more coffee flavorings to cover up for the lack of taste. These would naturally have more caffeine per serving.
Is There Decaf Coffee Ice Cream?
There are decaf coffee ice creams in the market, but they’re thin on the ground compared to caffeinated coffee ice cream.
I think one of the main reasons for this is that coffee ice cream itself is already relatively low in caffeine, so brands probably assume that there isn’t much call for a decaf coffee ice cream.
For example, take Talenti’s Coffee Chocolate Chip Gelato. The regular version has around 5-8mg of caffeine per serving. Decaf coffee ice creams could have around 4.3 to 6.9 mg of caffeine.
That is not a lot of caffeine reduced, and when you decaf the coffee, you add another process into the manufacturing, raising costs.
So this means consumers will need to pay more for decaf coffee ice cream, which would naturally mean fewer sales, so it’s clear to see why having a decaf option wouldn’t be on the top of an ice cream brand’s agenda.
Caffeine In Coffee Ice Cream – Nothing Much To Worry About?
So in this post we’ve explored the question of caffeine in coffee flavored ice cream, we’ve also looked at the different levels of caffeine found in these ice creams and why.
Overall, as much as these coffee ice creams have caffeine, there’s not much caffeine per serving, generally speaking. A cup of ice cream coffee will have significantly less caffeine count than a cup of full caffeine coffee.
With all of that said, I’m not a medical professional, I’m not even a proper Barista – I just play one on YouTube, so please don’t get your medical advice from me! If you have any concern whatsoever about caffeine content in ice cream or any other food or drink and whether they may be safe for you to consume, you should definitely consult an actual medical professional.