Is unrefrigerated brewed coffee bad for your health?

by Karen
(North carolina)

QUESTION:

I worry my mother is making herself sick by drinking 1-4 day-old brewed coffee she does not refrigerate. Sometimes she lets the coffee sit on the counter for hours or forgets to refrigerate it for 10 hours at a time. What effect can this have on her health? Does brewed coffee grow bacteria, for example?

Thanks, Karen H.

ANSWER:

I wouldn't worry about it. This seems to be a generation thing.

Right now, with Starbucks and hundreds of other coffee shop franchises selling $5 cups of coffee, we tend to get a little fussy with our coffee. Everything has to be just right.

But if you go back one generation, the culture of coffee drinking was very different. It was just a cup of Joe. People liked the taste and really appreciated the caffeine.

Among older coffee drinkers it is not uncommon for people to brew a pot of coffee and then drink it bit by bit over the following few days.

I'm not a doctor, and I don't know how long it takes before bacterial growth starts on coffee, but from what I have read and heard, this isn't something you have to be too concerned about.

Of course, you could always tell your mother that her coffee would taste a whole lot better if she made a fresh pot each day!

Comments for Is unrefrigerated brewed coffee bad for your health?

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Nov 24, 2017

Please people
by: Brainfiglio speajs

Coffee tested just 8 hours outside your frig. or any other containment area shall contain microbes and other microscopic, what I like to call creatures and when seen under a high powered microscope would turn your stomach.

Dec 23, 2009

How long does good to the last drop really mean its is good for?
by: Anonymous

Maxwell was advertized as being good to the last drop and now my question is when is it time to make another brewed pot of coffee other than that last drop was used?

A temp worker and a couple of other co-workers feel that this brewed coffee becomes burnt coffee under two hour after being brewed?! However, they fail to do anything to this same burnt coffee pot? They lack to clean out or rinsed out thoroughly the pot after poouring the burnt remains into the sink -just pouring out half a pot over one cup of coffee place same pot on the burning & being a frest pot!

Need to know how long brewed coffee can hold up for at the work office; this is not low grade coffee Maxell or Folgers brewed coffee at 9:30am brewed would this be still good at 10:45am?

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