Which Has More Caffeine, Light Roast Or Dark Roast?

Many coffee drinkers drink coffee for the caffeine content, which makes it worthwhile to understand which type of coffee has 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. Some people believe that how light or dark a coffee is comes from the sort of bean used for the coffee, but actually, this is not the case. The truth is, the difference comes in the roasting process, as the beans used in light roast coffee and dark roast coffee are usually the same.

The coffee bean expands and loses both water and caffeine when it is roasted in preparation for brewing. From this knowledge, you should take three distinct things: 1) As a bean is roasted longer, it loses more caffeine; 2) As a bean is roasted longer, it loses more water; 3) As a bean is roasted longer, it continues to expand!

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. Dark roast beans are larger than light roast beans, which is important to remember when you picture your beans being scooped up; and also, these dark roast beans have less caffeine content per bean. Because of this, one scoop of light roast beans actually has more beans in it than one scoop of dark roast beans, and each bean in this scoop has more caffeine in it than a dark roast bean has. In other words, light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roast coffee in any place where the beans are measured by volume instead of by weight, which is the case in just about any coffee shop.