Which Has More Caffeine, Light Roast Or Dark Roast?

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When it comes to coffee, many coffee drinkers drink it for the caffeine, which makes it worthwhile to know which coffees have the most caffeine. After all, you will find a stronger, smokier flavor in dark roast coffee, but does this necessarily mean that it also has more caffeine? There are actually two answers to this question; the first answer is that, actually, dark roast does not have more caffeine; the second answer, on the other hand, is that it is complicated.

It is extremely beneficial to understand how coffee becomes "dark" or "light" roast before ever trying to understand which has more caffeine. Many people incorrectly assume that a bean is "light" or "dark" based on the bean itself. The truth is, the beans used in light roast coffee and dark roast coffee are usually the same exact beans, and the difference comes from the roasting process.

As a coffee bean is roasted, it expands, and the bean itself also loses both water and caffeine during the roasting process. This means three distinct things: 1) The longer a bean is roasted, the more caffeine it loses; 2) The longer a bean is roasted, the more water it loses; 3) The longer a bean is roasted, the more it expands, and the larger it becomes!

If you are making coffee at home, or if you are buying coffee at a typical coffee shop, your beans are measured out with a scoop. If you are ordering a darker roast, each bean being scooped up will be slightly larger than the beans for a light roast coffee; and what's more, each of these larger beans will have less caffeine in them. This means that a scoop of light roast beans not only has a few more beans than a scoop of dark roast beans, but also, each bean has more caffeine in it. This means that, in any place where the beans are measured by volume - which is the case in most coffee shops you will visit - light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roast.