Dark Roast vs. Light Roast

A lot of coffee drinkers say that they prefer “strong coffee.” What does that even mean? Well, turns out it means different things to different people. For some, it means coffee with higher caffeine content. This month we’ll explore that idea.

So, does dark roast or light roast have more caffeine? It depends. The caffeine content in a single coffee bean is fairly stable throughout the roasting process, so, bean for bean the roast level doesn’t have an impact on caffeine content.

There are generally two ways to measure coffee for your brew: be weight, and by volume, or scoop. As coffee is roasted darker, it loses moisture content, and therefore weight. So, if you weight your coffee, you will get more beans in the same weight of dark roast, and therefore more caffeine.

On the other hand, as you roast darker, the beans become less dense, taking up more room. So, if you are a scooper, then you’ll get more beans per scoop from a light roast, and therefore more caffeine. So, which is it for you?