Let’s take a look at a 3.5-ounce bag of Taza Perfectly Unrefined Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans made with 55% dark chocolate. In a 28-gram serving, which the company equates to approximately 36 beans, you’ll find 135 milligrams of caffeine (via Taza). This boils down to 3.75 milligrams of caffeine per bean. In an 8-ounce cup of coffee, you’ll find between 80 and 100 milligrams of caffeine, reports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). If we were to stick with 100 milligrams as a nice round number, that means a person would need to eat about 26.5 chocolate-covered espresso beans to get approximately the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee.
Now, granted, that’s quite a few coffee beans. However, Taza chocolate-covered espresso beans appear to be on the lower end of the caffeine spectrum, seeing as Caffeine Informer reports that milk chocolate-covered espresso beans can contain anywhere from 5 to 10 milligrams of caffeine each, while dark chocolate-covered espresso beans can harbor between 6 and 11 milligrams. El Dorado Coffee Roasters places this number even higher, saying that dark chocolate-covered espresso beans can have as much as 12 milligrams of caffeine per bean.