The Truth About Strong Coffee

What is it and how to get it.

“A good cup of strong coffee” is a phrase almost as familiar as the drink itself. For the individual it can mean intense flavor, sometimes a roasty bitterness, sometimes just caffeine, but within the coffee industry, “strong” specifically means a weighty, rich cup.

The Key Ingredients

Beans
Some beans will naturally yield a more weighty cup, depending on the variety, the environment it was grown in, and the processing method. Check the bag for clues: most specialty coffee will indicate what kind of “body” that particular roast has. The heavier the body, the stronger the brew.

Brew Method
While all extraction methods emphasise flavor, the amount of insoluble particulates and oils that reaches your cup will vary dramatically depending on the type and thickness of the filter used. The French Press, with its metal mesh screen, leaves most of the oils and sediments in the brew, yielding a bangin’ bold brew. Any drip method with a paper filter (machine drip, V60, Chemex, etc.) will catch more of those particulates, delivering a brighter, lighter cup. The Aeropress, with it’s extremely thick filter, creates THE smoothest & silkiest brew. Any method done right will give you superb deliciousness, but for a strong cup, opt for something with minimal filtering.

Ratios
If you’ve already picked you beans & brew method, try tweaking the ratio of coffee to water. The more extracted coffee per unit of water, the stronger the cup. While we recommend starting with a 1:16 ratio of coffee grounds to water, strengthen the brew by either using more coffee or less water. Each kind of coffee has its own sweet spot, so don’t be afraid to play around with the ratios until you’re loving it every time.

Myths About Strength

“Darker roasts are stronger.”
Okay, so this requires two mini-answers, depending on whether strength here means “flavor” or “caffeine. Read on for both.

“Darker roasts have more caffeine.”
In fact, they have less. The longer a bean is roasted, the more degraded caffeine molecules become. However, the difference between a dark and light roast is not likely to be significant enough for a noticeable effect.

We do need to note here that Robusta beans have twice as much caffeine as Arabica, and are also typically roasted much darker. In this situation, a darkly roasted Robusta bean will have more caffeine than an Arabica of any roast. However, Robusta beans lack the nuanced flavors & sweetness of Arabica beans, often tasting sour or woody instead. All specialty coffee is Arabica.

“Darker Roasts have a bolder flavor”
The darker the roast, the more the bean will taste like the roast, so this is true if you’re specifically looking for a roasty flavor. However, specialty coffees are valued for their terroir — flavors that emerge naturally in the beans during the growing process — and are therefore roasted carefully in order to not mask these delicious notes with overly roasty tones. (Low-quality coffees are often roasted very dark for the same reason; sour and woody notes are covered up.)

So… yes, a bolder roast flavor, but there is a huge variety of flavors found in good coffee thatshine with a lighter roast.

“Bitterness equals strength.”
The origin of this perception is rooted in the fact that caffeine is incredibly bitter, so if strength mean caffeine to you, the two do correlate. However, there are many reasons that your coffee may be bitter, including staleness and over extraction, so judging a coffee experience based on bitterness may be rather hit-and-miss.

So to sum up: if you’re talking coffee, strength means the weightiness and richness of a cup, as compared to a crisp, light cup. Both are delicious, and we salute your continued adventuring into the land of good brews!

Happy sipping, ya’ll.