Barley and caffeine: does your cup have any?

Barley has no caffeine. Not the grain, not the roasted barley used in drinks, not the barley teas sold as a coffee alternative. If you are looking for a hot drink at the end of the day and you are avoiding caffeine, barley is a safe choice on that specific point. What barley does not guarantee is that your cup is caffeine-free in every form you encounter it — because the problem is rarely the cereal and almost always what comes mixed with it.

Why barley contains no caffeine

Caffeine can turn up in products you would not expect, so it is worth checking the label. Barley is a cereal. It does not produce caffeine, it does not accumulate it, it does not contain it.

This is stated almost in passing in two papers on cereal drinks. One describes high-altitude barley tea as a caffeine-free cereal drink, and another describes cereal coffee — made mainly from roasted barley and rye, with chicory and sugar beet — as what consumers look for precisely because it is a caffeine-free drink and less irritating than coffee. Neither paper did an exhaustive measurement of caffeine in barley. What we have is a background description, not a dedicated laboratory assay. For a cereal, though, the conclusion is physiologically unremarkable: there is no source of caffeine there.

Then why does your barley drink sometimes contain caffeine?

Here the answer stops being automatic. There are three scenarios in which a drink that says «barley» on the pack can deliver caffeine to you, and all of them happen outside the grain.

The first is blending. Many barista-style cereal drinks are not pure barley — they combine barley, rye, chicory, and sometimes malt extract or other cereals. None of these brings caffeine. The word «cereal» in the name does not remove the word «coffee» from the ingredients list.

The second is tea. If you are reading this because you are looking for a caffeine-free tea and thought of barley, be careful what comes alongside. One analysis of twenty commercial tea products found caffeine in every white, green and black tea variety tested, and none in the herbal infusion varieties tested in that same batch. That sounds reassuring — and it is, for the herbs in question. Except that another analysis, this one on herbal infusions sold as sleep aids, detected caffeine in lime-tree extracts: traces to 110 mg per kilogram in the raw material, and traces to 226 micrograms per cup in the prepared drink. In other words, a herbal blend is not automatically caffeine-free. It may be, and probably is, but it is not a guarantee you can assume without reading.

The third scenario is decaffeination misunderstood. «Decaffeinated» does not mean «caffeine-free». The FDA is clear: decaffeinated coffees and teas have less caffeine than the regular equivalents, but they still have some — in decaffeinated coffee, typically between 2 and 15 mg per cup. If your goal is zero caffeine, and not just less, «decaffeinated» is not enough.

What to check on the label before you buy

The FDA recommends checking the label, especially if you are sensitive to caffeine, if you are limiting your intake or if you are giving the product to children or adolescents — because caffeine turns up in places you would not expect. Applied to barley, this comes down to three simple steps.

• Read the full ingredients list, not just the product name. Caffeine can appear in products where you would not expect it, which is why the FDA advises checking the label, especially if you are sensitive to caffeine, if you limit your intake or if you give the product to children or adolescents.
• Look for a caffeine content per serving, where one exists. If there is none and the product is a blend, treat it as possibly containing caffeine until you know otherwise.
• If it is for a child or adolescent, this care stops being optional. Caffeine can turn up in unexpected products, and the label is the only place that information is declared.

A pure barley tea, made from a single ingredient, does not need this gymnastics. A blend with seven ingredients does.

And if what you want is energy without caffeine?

It is worth separating two things that often get muddled in the mind of whoever is searching. One is «I want a drink that will not keep me awake». The other is «I want to feel more energetic». Barley contains no caffeine, according to the description of the grain in the literature.

If tiredness is the underlying problem, that is a different conversation and it will not be solved with a cup — there is a page on this site dedicated to foods that give you energy and another on autumn asthenia, which deal with that in more detail than would make sense here.

On supplements, and because the next question is almost always this one: there is a gummy on the market with guarana, L-theanine, L-tyrosine and B-complex vitamins, in which guarana is the source of caffeine — 44 mg per two-gummy dose, declared on the label. It is not a caffeine-free alternative to barley; it is the opposite of that. It is a caffeinated alternative, dosed and declared, for anyone who wants caffeine and prefers to know how much they are taking. It contains caffeine and is not recommended for children, pregnant or breastfeeding women. A second gummy, with green tea extract, is also not caffeine-free by definition — green tea is one of the plants that contain it. Neither of these options replaces habits; both are supplements, and food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.

The questions that remain unanswered

It would be good to be able to tell you exactly how much caffeine is in a cup of roasted barley bought in any shop. We do not have that figure, and we are not going to invent it. The papers we have describe barley and cereal drinks as caffeine-free, but none directly measured the caffeine content of a sample of barley or barley tea. The statement rests on a botanical characteristic of the cereal, not on a published chemical analysis.

We also do not know, from the available data, what the real proportion of «barley» products on the market is that include coffee or tea in the blend. That is a labelling question, not a scientific one, and it is resolved by reading the pack in front of you.

When this stops being a label question

There are situations where the question «does it contain caffeine?» should no longer be answered by you alone. If you are thinking of giving a caffeinated drink to a child or an adolescent, or if you are sensitive to caffeine, the FDA advises checking the product label and limiting consumption, because caffeine can appear in products where you would not expect it. Not because barley is a problem (it is not), but because the question that brought you here may be part of a bigger decision that deserves to be accompanied.

For the specific and immediate case, the answer stands: barley itself has no caffeine. Your cup does, if someone puts coffee in it. Turn the pack over and read the ingredients — it is the only step no one can take for you.