The Secret to Getting the Most Caffeine from Your Coffee

Brian Stoffel
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Almost to a fault, when people ask for a “strong coffee”, they mean that they want a dark roast. It might surprise you to know, then, that dark roast actually has the least amount of caffeine in it.

In effect, what people are asking for is a “strong taste”, not the beneficial effects of the odorless, tasteless compound that is caffeine.

French roast is one of the darkest available. Image source: Flickr

But that doesn’t mean that you’re crazy for feeling the effects of caffeine shortly after drinking your espresso (which is almost always made with…dark roast beans).

The Counter-Intuitive Science of Coffee

Here’s what you need to know: caffeine is a compound found in coffee. As coffee roasts, the caffeine is burned up in the roaster. That’s why light roast has considerably more caffeine than dark roast.

But there’s a catch: because the oils in a dark roast have been broken down to a greater degree by the heat in the roaster, the caffeine is more easily absorbed into our bloodstream when it comes from a dark roast. So even though the caffeine content in dark roast is less, it hits our system very quickly. Coupled with the fact that we normally “shoot” a shot of espresso rather than sipping it slowly while reading, this helps explain why we are so Pavlovian-tied to dark roasts and caffeine.

(Incidentally, this is also why dark roasts tend to be kinder to our stomachs. They don’t have to work as hard to break the coffee down to be digested — the roaster already did that for us)

Coffee being roasted this year at El Toledo in Atenas, Costa Rica.

Light roast, on the other hand, has a delayed reaction. It takes a while to enter your blood stream, but once it does — look out!

First-time coffee drinkers to El Toledo usually have too much light roast. Because it’s a high quality coffee, they’ve never had good light roast before, and they feel none of the caffeine hitting their system, encouraging them to down even more. It isn’t until twenty minutes later that they really start getting the shakes.

While it’s a crude analogy, it isn’t that different than the naive college freshman who takes his/her first shot of alcohol, feels nothing, then downs four more before regretting those decision.

Don’t pretend like this isn’t you! Image source: Flickr

So, if getting the most caffeine out of your coffee is what you need to get you going in the morning, here’s what to do:

  1. Get a shot of espresso — it will meet your short-term caffeine needs.
  2. Follow that up with a large cup of light roast — just when the espresso is wearing off, the caffeine from the light roast will kick in and keep you going for hours.

While that’s probably not the healthiest approach, hopefully you can make better decisions about your own caffeine consumption with this knowledge.

Brian Stoffel

Written by

After 5 years as an inner-city teacher, my wife & I moved to Costa Rica & discovered an inspiring farm. We split our time b/t there and the US w/ our two kids.

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