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The short answer is pretty obvious. Any coffee, as long as it's not decaffeinated, keeps you awake. While that is true, it is also true that some coffees have more caffein than others, some preparation methods contain more caffein than others and the ability of any coffee to keep you awake has obviously also limitations. If you are close to passing out from fatigue, than coffee also won't help that much anymore. I'm gonna break it all down quickly.

Coffee type

There are two commercially important types of coffee beans. Arabica and Robusta. Arabica plants produce higher quality coffee with better and more complex flavors. However in terms of caffein content Robusta coffee is much higher with roughly twice the caffein in the brewed cup.

Coffee preparation

Generally speaking you could divide coffee preparation into two different groups. Espresso and everything else. Everything else has many sub groups that I'm not gonna get into too much now. The common understanding is that espresso is "stronger" with which is meant that it has more caffein than other coffee drinks. That is true when you measure per ml. However due to the small servings of espresso the caffein content of one shot of espresso is lower than that of a typical cup of filter coffee. An espresso shot contains roughly 53mg of caffein while a cup of drip coffee has more than twice to three times as much (115mg to 175mg) due to the bigger serving size. Turkish coffee has even higher contents.

Recommendation

So based on this information I would recommend you to slowly drink several cups of brewed or filtered Arabica coffee during your night shifts. That should keep you caffeinated and awake more effectively than espresso plus you get to drink delicious coffee all night long. The maximum caffein content you would get with a turkish style preparation, in my opinion the best trade off between caffein and flavor would be drip coffee though. It's lighter in taste so you can drink more as well. I would recommend Arabica for the better taste and possible health benefits as compared to Robusta. You don't have to be afraid of negative health effects. Coffee is largely redeemed and is today even considered a healthy beverage with possible positive effects on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, some forms of cancer, degenerative diseases of the nervous system such as Alzheimers and many more.

avocado1
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