What's the deal with strength?

Coffee strength explained!

This week is all about the strength of coffee and the weird usage of the word, I’ll keep it short so lets get started!

Caffeine

Caffeine in coffee is one of the big selling points of coffees marketed as being super strong, this is mainly found with coffees that are super dark roasted and usually 100% Robusta.

Robusta coffee usually contains on average double the caffeine than that of Arabica. Weirdly the darker the roast the slightly less caffeine the coffee contains but arguably not by enough to make a meaningful difference.

Strength rating

Alright, this one most people will be familiar with as its the “strength” rating seen on coffee bags in stores and online. This is usually just an easy to understand statement from the roasters explaining what to expect in perceived flavour strength/ intensity, basically avoids using the roast levels and keeps things simple.

Bitterness?

Bitterness is very similar to the first two topics as both darker roasted Arabica and Robusta coffees are usually perceived in having more noticeable bitterness, this leads to many people describing the drink as too strong but really the more accurate wording would be too bitter.

Extraction

The last and arguably most accurate usage of strength in coffee is describing the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids), this is relatively similar to the alcohol percentages on wine and other drinks as it is an accurate indication of how strong the drink is overall. The TDS is calculated using a refractometer to see what percentage of the drink is made up of suspended coffee particles.

Filter coffee has generally a much lower TDS than that of espresso which is why espresso is known as the strongest coffee.

I’ll try keep these short from now on, really glad your enjoying these posts and feel free to comment any suggestions or questions on our Instagram!

Have a great week and some even better coffees!