For some of us, coffee is more than a tasty beverage. A lot of people actually consume coffee to help them focus on their daily tasks, whether they’re studying, work, or others. Whether you’ve noticed that your regular cup of coffee is doing it for you anymore or you’re just curious, you might ask yourself “what coffee gives you the most energy?”.
The short answer is that espresso has the highest concentration of caffeine per volume, but drip coffee has the most caffeine per serving size. If you’re looking to make coffee at home with the most caffeine, we recommend getting Devil’s Mountain Black Label coffee. It has up to 1,555 mg of caffeine per 12-ounce serving, which is over 10X a normal serving of drip coffee.
Ideally, coffee’s stimulant effect is due to the amount of caffeine in them, which is controlled by a variety of factors that you should keep in mind while choosing a powerful cup of coffee.
In today’s article, we’ll walk you through a complete guide with everything you need to know regarding this matter, so you can pick the ideal type of coffee for your morning kick!
Does Coffee Actually Give Us Any Energy?
To answer this question, we should first have a look at the different concepts of biological energies that our bodies consume.
Physically speaking, energy is defined as a quantitative property that is transferred to an object to give it the ability to do certain work.
Author Note: This applies perfectly to food. We consume food to be transferred into raw energy and stored inside our bodies, which we can later burn just like a fuel to spend energy. The unit of energy inside our bodies is known as “calories”.
Calories are those numerical values that you check on different foods if you’re watching your weight or on a diet.
Food with high accessible calories is likely to provide your body with more energy, while others with low calories or non easily accessible calories won’t give you as much.
To say that coffee gives us energy means that coffee has a high amount of accessible calories that your body can consume and burn off.
However, according to nutritional fact sheets, coffee in its purest form, which is devoid of creamers, milk, or sugar), has almost no calories at all!
In fact, black unsweetened coffee is allowed during intermittent fasting periods because it doesn’t have any calories, so it won’t break your fast.
Based on these facts, it’s safe to say that, from a nutritional standpoint, coffee doesn’t actually give us any caloric energy.
Why Do We Feel Energized After Coffee?
The previous facts might leave some people dazzled and confused because coffee does make them feel more energized to the point they can’t function properly without. So what’s the catch here?
While coffee doesn’t have any calories to help you lift a finger, it does have another secret weapon that classifies it as a “superfood”.
This secret ingredient is known as “caffeine”, which is a stimulant for brain activity that’s highly soluble in fats, so it directly reaches the brain tissue, applying its effects on the brain.
Caffeine is a just temporary stimulant that affects the brain receptors to make the brain work a bit faster by blocking the centers that makes you feel more sedated and sleepy, which makes you feel more active and awake!
For those reasons, the word “kick” is more accurate than the word “energy” while describing its effect on the body.
Caffeine is also available in green, black tea, as well as soda and energy drinks. However, it’s best to avoid the caffeine kick from these soda and energy drinks because they usually contain a huge amount of sugar, which does more harm than good.
Caffeine is a part of a healthy diet if you consume them with healthy doses that range between 100 to 200 mg per day, which is found in about 1 to 2 cups of brewed coffee.
The effect of caffeine usually starts to show 5 to 30 minutes after you ingest the coffee and usually lasts for up to 12 hours.
These numbers change from one person to the other depending on their caffeine tolerance, body mass, and metabolism.
Factors Affecting Caffeine Kick in Your Coffee
Now that you know how caffeine impacts your brain activity, it’s time to know the factors that affect its presence in your cup of coffee.
Type of Coffee Bean
There are two main types of coffee beans in the world: Arabica and Robusta.
Author Note: As a rule of thumb, arabica is the higher quality beans with a fruity and sweet taste of the coffee when compared to the bitter earthy taste of Robusta. But that’s not what we’re looking for here.
Arabica grows at much higher elevations than Robusta beans. Since the coffee plant uses caffeine as an insect repellent, Arabica beans don’t produce that much.
On the other hand, Robusta beans grow at low elevations and are more susceptible to insect attacks, so it produces a lot more caffeine, nearly twice as much.
If you’re looking for a stronger kick, you should opt for coffee made from Robusta beans, which also comes at a much cheaper price.
Type of Coffee Roast
A lot of people think that dark roast coffee contains more caffeine than light roast one. However, if they’re made from the same bean, they’ll have the same amount of caffeine.
However, roasted beans usually shrink and lose some of their weight. So a darker roast will usually be lightweight beans.
In other words, 1 pound of dark roast coffee will have more beans than a light roast one and therefore has a slight bit more caffeine in it.
Type of Coffee Drink
The way you prepare your coffee will impact the final amount of caffeine in your cup. The finer the grind size, the more caffeine extracted in your cup.
This means that a drip coffee will naturally have a higher level of caffeine than a french press of the same size.
The extraction of the caffeine is also affected by the temperature of the brew. Keeping the water at 195 to 205 °F (90 to 95 °C) will extract the most caffeine, so don’t expect iced coffee to have high levels of caffeine.
Serving Size
In addition to the previous factor, the serving size will also impact your coffee heavily.
For example, although espresso should have more concentrated caffeine in it, a regular 8-ounce cup of drip coffee has more caffeine in it than a single shot (1.5 ounces) of espresso.
Brand of Coffee
Besides the naturally brewed coffee beans, there are some specific brands of coffee that are made with an exceptionally higher amount of caffeine per serving.
These brands will usually have more kick than any regular brand of coffee. But more on that later.
What Coffee Gives You the Strongest Kick
Based on the previous section, the factor with the highest impact on your caffeine kick is the type of bean. However, a good combination of all these factors together will yield a highly caffeinated cup of coffee.
To brew the most powerful cup of morning joe, you first need to make sure that you’re brewing a Robusta bean coffee.
Make sure that you pick the coffee at dark roast if you’re serious about getting every last drop of caffeine into your cup. Remember to also keep the temperature of extraction within the ideal range.
Finally, you should know that a double shot of espresso will have more caffeine than any other coffee brew under 10 ounces.
Here’s a quick list of all the different brews with the suggested amount of caffeine you’d get from them:
| Type of coffee | Serving size | Amount of Caffeine per serving |
| Drip coffee | 8 ounces | 65 to 120 mg |
| Brewed coffee | 8 ounces | 90 to 100 mg |
| Espresso (single shot) | 1.5 ounce | 60 to 105 mg |
| Double espresso | 2.5 ounce | 120 to 160 mg |
| Devil Mountain Black Label | 12 ounces | 1,555 mg |
Benefits of High Caffeine Coffee
Caffeine won’t just give you a natural stimulant boost. But it also has other benefits, such as:
- Boosts metabolism and help in burning fats (study 1989)
- Reduce the risk of type II diabetes (study 2009)
- Help with the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (study 2002)
- May protect from Alzheimer’s and Dementia (study 2002)
- Can protect the liver from cirrhosis (study 2006)
Why You Shouldn’t Go Overboard with Coffee
Despite all the previous benefits, you should know that everything is good to a certain point. According to health guidelines, the maximum tolerated dose of coffee per day for a healthy adult is about 400 mg per day. Sometimes drinking coffee that gives you the most energy might be a bad idea.
However, exceeding this healthy dose of coffee might cause a wide range of undesirable side effects that are the exact opposite of what you expect from coffee. These symptoms include:
- Increase heart rate
- Rapid breathing
- Impaired focus
- Anxiety
- Feeling jittery and even drowsy
Author Note: Remember to always limit your intake of coffee to about 2 to 3 cups a day to avoid reaching the unhealthy dose that causes unwanted side effects that outweigh the benefits.
Wrap Up
There you have it. A complete guide with everything you need to know about what coffee gives you the most energy.
Ideally, a double shot espresso will have the highest amount of brewed coffee when compared to any drip coffee less than 10 ounces.
Despite being not recommended for your health, if you’re looking for the most caffeinated brands in the world, the Devil Mountain Black Label is currently the highest one with up to 1,555 mg of caffeine per 12-ounce serving. So technically it’s the coffee that gives you the most energy.
Stay caffeinated friends!