This coffee doesn’t just taste awesome; it will boost your brain like no other!

Last week, I started to experiment with “Bulletproof Coffee”. It’s sort of a commercial product but you can actually make your own at home. This is what I did.

It’s a bit too early to draw conclusions but my first impression is that I’ve been running at 120% mental capacity since I started. And I’ve surely cranked out a lot of extra work that I had been procrastinating on for a while (including work on this blog).

It may also just be a placebo effect or just a temporary energy boost of myself subconsciously wanting to check off as many todos as possible before the summer holidays… or maybe it’s just switching from green tea to coffee… but I sure feel pretty darn good these days ;) I’ll post more when I have had the opportunity to run a couple of weeks on and off that stuff.

In the meantime, if you want to try it out yourself, here’s how I’m doing it at home…

The ingredients

Key additives: grass fed butter and coconut oil

You need:

  • Organic coffee, as fresh as possible. I use pure and organic Arabica coffee from Guatemala. You may like and use a different origin, but it’s highly recommended to stick to a single origin in order to get the cleanest possible coffee. No blends of different beans/origins! Also, Arabica is a better variety than Robusta. And of course it needs to be organic (clean) and as fresh as possible. I keep mine in the fridge once its open (hence the glass container). It would probably be even better if you ground your own beans yourself. Gotta try that someday…
  • Grass fed organic butter. Do not compromise on the quality of the butter! Industrial butter can defeat the purpose.
  • Coconut oil. You might need to go to an organic products store (Whole Foods, etc.) to find that. It’s solid white at lower temperatures and liquid at higher temperatures (like hot summer days). I keep mine in the fridge during summer. (Note you can use that for cooking too… which I did for a while before switching to macadamia nut oil).

Step 1 - Brew some black coffee

I use a French Press but you can do this any way you like. I let it brew for 4 minutes.

During that time it may be a good idea to pre-heat your blender by putting some hot water into it. This will prevent it from absorbing all the heat of your coffee in step 2…

Step 2 - Put everything into the blender

Ideally, you’d want a smaller blender ;)

Put the following in the blender: (of course, remove the hot water first if you have pre-heated your blender)

  • 1 cup of freshly brewed black coffee (hot)
  • 1 medium spoon of coconut oil
  • 1 medium spoon of grass fed organic butter

You may of course adjust the quantities later but that’s a good start.

You will see a layer of fat floating on top of your coffee as soon as the coconut oil and butter melt. It looks a bit scary but these are supposed to be all healthy fats (plus it’s actually less fat than if you ate bacon and eggs instead… more on that later).

Step 3 - Blend!

The more foam, the better!

After just a couple of seconds you get the creamy coffee you can see above!

So, how does it taste?

Pour it in a cup/mug and check it out: it actually tastes like coffee with cream or even half & half – except it doesn’t contain lactose and barely any milk proteins. It also has a slight coconut smell which I actually like.

My first cup felt extremely creamy and rich. Maybe I had actually used more fat than today. I first thought I wouldn’t finish it but by drinking it slowly while reviewing my todos for the day I actually drank it all without thinking about it.

The weirdest thing is that it seems to cut your appetite. On the first few days I didn’t feel any hunger for 5 to 8 hours after that. And I actually didn’t force myself to eat either. It seems that by reducing the fat quantities though I get hungry faster.

After a week of this, my weight has gone down slightly but nothing significant. I’m just saying this in case you think eating/drinking fat makes you fat — the real body fat actually comes from sugar / carbs. I have also noticed I was less drawn to sweets and deserts for the 5 to 8 hours period after the morning coffee.

But as said earlier, I need to experiment a bit more before I draw conclusions. (Bookmark me and check back here in a couple of weeks if you’re interested.) → 30 days on Bulletproof Coffee: Results.

Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Sebastien Lorber

Hi

Will give it a try your recipe as I think official bulletproof products are quite expensive and too much marketed.

I’m also from Paris (and also developer!).

I already have that same coconut oil from Naturalia, but wonder where to buy the grass-fed butter as it’s not often mentioned in the packaging. Can I find a good quality butter in supermarkets, under labels like Isigny butter for exemple?

And what about the coffee?

If you could give me exactly what you buy it would be nice so that I do not try something too fancy :)

2014-11-12 00-11

Comment from: François Planque

Hi Sebastien!

I’ve never found 100% guaranteed grass fed butter in France. At Naturalia, buy the butter that feels the softest (grass fed butter is soft, grain fed butter is comparatively hard – at the same temperature). If you’re lucky you’ll find “summer butter” (“beurre d’été”) which is the butter made from when the cows are outside in the summer, and actually eat grass.

Regarding coffee, I tried the official bulletproof brand. It’s nothing extraordinary. I’m still trying different varieties of organic coffee (many from Naturalia) to find one I like as much as the NON-organic one I love which is the Guatemala from “Monoprix Gourmet” ;)

2014-11-12 02-15

Comment from: Sebastien Lorber

thanks will try that.

Echiré’s butter seems to be nice and easy to find btw

2014-11-13 00-47