Why does lighter roast coffee have more caffeine?
In: Chemistry
Coffee shop owner here. The answers here are on the right track but are unnecessarily complicating it.
I’ll try to keep it ELI5 as possible. Roasting does not change the caffeine content of each bean. What it does do is make the bean expand slightly and lose some water weight. So each bean is lighter, larger and less dense the darker it is roasted.
So if you measure coffee by volume (like with a scoop) there are more beans per scoop of light roast than there are of dark roast. Therefore more caffeine.
If you measure by weight, like we do at the shop, 4oz per pot, there are more dark roast beans per 4 oz than there are light roast beans.
But honestly, either way we are only talking about a few beans per pot difference. It’s really not a very significant factor in caffeine content.
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