On a few occasions over the last month or so, I have bought large cups of espresso coffee.

Now before you freak out and call the Federal Police and inquire hysterically as to who has abducted Verity, the well known tea blogger, and replaced her with a Pod or what have you, let me just say that this coffee was not for consumption. No indeed; it was for spraying around in my garden in the hopes that it would get rid of some of the slugs and snails that have been feasting on my tender seedlings.

You see, apparently caffeine is inimical to gastropods; it gets absorbed through their skin and then kills them somehow. That’s the theory. I can’t really say if it worked, because I certainly didn’t notice hordes of dead snails everywhere, but for the purposes of this post that’s beside the point anyway.

Let me explain what the point actually is (she wrote, long-windedly).

Each application of coffee spray consisted of 50ml coffee in 500ml water, which was about enough for our small garden. Ergo, I had the other 50ml of coffee stored in the fridge for a few days until I had a chance to apply a second round. SO! My question is this, tea friends: would there still have been any functional caffeine left in the refrigerated portion? Or would it have degraded upon storage, the way that antioxidants in brewed tea do? (there, see, there is some tea post this post)

I had a bit of a browse on the caffeine page on Wikipedia last night, but the only information on the half life of caffeine related to its metabolism in the human body (highly variable across individuals) – nothing about its breakdown under other circumstances. Does anyone know anything more about this? Just curious.