Is This $29 Bag of Electrolyte-Infused Coffee Worth It?

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Coffee is something of a paradox for runners. Many of us drink it (or, ahem, depend on it) for the caffeine boost—to wake us up for early miles or push us through a tough workout. But at the same time, it’s a diuretic, shunting precious water and electrolytes out of the body.  More coffee means more trips to the bathroom and more fluid lost, right? That’s what I always believed, at least. But as a millennial, I’m woefully loyal to my bean juice, and thus I continue to drink it and hope the benefits outweigh the costs.

Maybe our phones have figured out a way to read our innermost thoughts and worries, because one day I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when a colorful ad popped up promoting Long Run Coffee, a coffee that is infused with electrolytes. My brain broke a little bit at the thought. Coffee? Good. Electrolytes? Good. Together? How the heck does that work?

I couldn’t resist. I ordered it. I had a lot of questions—can you hydrate and dehydrate simultaneously? Would the coffee taste salty? Could drinking it before a run keep me hydrated longer? Curious (and skeptical), I ordered a few bags and then turned to an expert to help me untangle the truth about coffee, how it impacts our hydration, and thus how it could affect my running. As it turns out, almost everything I thought I knew about coffee was wrong.

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My Experience with Electrolyte Coffee

The coffee arrived as whole beans, which the Long Run website states are ethically-sourced from Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rica. While I’m certainly not a coffee sommelier, even I didn’t have high hopes for beans “infused with electrolytes.” But this is delicious coffee. While I’m no gourmand, I enjoyed the taste of the two flavors I tried: The Long Run Dark Roast and The Post Race Banana (and before you gag, hear me out on the banana flavor). I was worried that the flavors would be muddled by the brand’s “patent-protected coffee + electrolyte formulation,” which includes sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. However, it doesn’t taste that much different from my usual light roast from Starbucks.

Using my coffee maker, I followed the brewing instructions (2 tablespoons of ground coffee per 12 ounces of water) and made a pot. I drank it black—how I usually enjoy coffee. The results? A bold, full taste, though not as bitter as other dark roasts I’ve tried, which I enjoyed. It’s smooth and still subtle, with deep, slightly sweet flavor notes. This is a moderately dark roast, so on the lighter end of the “dark” spectrum.

And on the opposite end of “subtle” is The Post Race Banana coffee, which I found surprisingly delicious. It tastes like I was sipping my morning brew with a warm banana nut muffin. But if you’re not a fan of flavored coffee, I’d skip this one. I’m assuming it would be overwhelming because there’s a lot of banana flavor in that cup of coffee.

As for how it made me feel, the effects were minimal, in my opinion. Most mornings, I enjoy matcha tea. But on my long run days, I dabble in a cup of black dark roast 30 minutes before I take off because I like the added caffeine boost. I wondered if Long Run Coffee would improve how I felt before and after runs, considering the added electrolyte content.

I had the Long Run Dark Roast before two shorter runs (around 4-7 miles) and before two of my longer runs (8-10 miles), and didn’t feel a difference in my performance, nor my hydration levels. My thirst levels seemed to be unaffected. But drinking a cup before my run gave me some peace of mind that I had a few extra electrolytes in my system that I could count on, in addition to the supplemented electrolytes in the water I ran with.

While sipping on my new brew, I did some research and discovered that Long Run Coffee isn’t the only electrolyte-infused cuppa joe aimed at runners. VitaCup Hydration is instant coffee with coconut water, magnesium, and pink Himalayan salt. Tailwind has a coffee-flavored recovery mix made with complete protein, carbs, fats, and electrolytes. COpHEE beans are advertised as being “low acidity” due to added electrolytes, which may neutralize the acidity. (If you care about the science of it all, electrolytes have charged ions that bind to acidic hydrogen ions, neutralizing their charge.)

Is this emerging category the next great athletic frontier, or just another tech bro optimization culture fad?

An Expert’s Insights

To find out if this coffee is the real deal, I turned to Nick Gillit, PhD, CEO of The Osmolality Lab. That research lab analyzes beverages and identifies which ones are the most hydrating. It also serves as a third-party tester for liquids, gels, beverages, and supplements to determine variables like pH value, freezing point, viscosity, conductivity, and salinity.

The first thing I asked him was about “hydrating coffee.” Isn’t that an oxymoron?

“Most people believe that coffee is dehydrating, but the truth is more complex,” Gillit says. “Coffee beverages themselves are not inherently dehydrating, but the caffeine in them can have that effect.”

In other words, coffee is a mild diuretic. But that dehydrating effect is small and is typically balanced out by all the water in coffee.

As for the effectiveness of Long Run Coffee specifically in the hydration department, he looked at the nutritional content of the Long Run Dark Roast:

1 tablespoon of ground coffee

Sodium: 75mg
Potassium: 175mg
Calcium: 12mg
Magnesium: 12mg
Caffeine: 95mg

Compare that to 1 tablespoon of ground coffee (Peet’s Dark Roast)

Sodium: 5mg
Potassium: 116mg
Calcium: 5mg
Magnesium: 7mg
Caffeine: 100mg

As you can see, a cup (8 ounces) of regular coffee already contains around 120mg of naturally-occurring potassium. So Long Run has just 55mg more than your average cup, a small addition compared to the recommended daily value (DV) for endurance athletes, which is around 4,700mg.

“Nutrients contributing 20 percent or more of the daily value can be described as an excellent source, while those providing between 10-19 percent are considered a good source,” Gillit says. “This product contains between 4-11 percent of the DV.”

That means that, technically, the only way Long Run coffee would be a considered “good” source of potassium is if you had about six tablespoons. That’s 300mg of caffeine (about 3 and ½ cups), so at that point, there are better ways to get your DV.

The other electrolytes like sodium, calcium, and magnesium in Long Run coffee contribute even less to your DV, which means it won’t necessarily change the game if you drink it before or after your run.

My Caffeinated Conclusion 

Here’s the thing: Long Run is more-or-less a marketing schtick, but I still like the taste. You pay a premium for the electrolyte infusion, though, which hasn’t proven to benefit running performance. A 12-ounce bag of beans is $29 (without shipping costs), whereas the same size bag of dark roast from Starbucks is about $8, and there are plenty of brands available for less than that. It’s definitely a splurge, but whether or not it’s worth it is entirely up to you.

Happy caffeinating!

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