Are you brewing coffee that comes out watery or just falls flat? Whether you’re trying to reach a deadline or you’re staying up with a baby, strong coffee can keep you going. So, how do you find the strongest cup of coffee?
Let’s dive into making potent coffee and get you that cup of energy you need. You’ll learn everything you need to know, from brewing methods to grind size and more.
How to Make Strong Coffee: Robusta Espresso
When people talk about strong coffee, they mean a coffee packed with flavor and caffeine. A cup of super strong coffee will knock you down with a rich, full-bodied flavor as well as a caffeine hit that gives you a jolt of long-lasting energy. Both flavor and caffeine start in the bean and only make it into your cup by being extracted and dissolved into your brew.
To get more flavor and caffeine into your cup, you need to increase the amount of extraction. You have a few options — increase the temperature of the brewing water, increase the brewing time, increase the pressure, or make the grind finer and consistent.
By changing these key variables during brewing, you alter the physics of your coffee. Here’s our step-by-step guide to help dissolve more caffeine and flavor into your cup.
What You Need to Make a Strong Cup of Coffee
To make strong coffee, you need to start with the right tools and ingredients:
- Espresso Machine — Any high-pressure extraction method will brew strong coffee, but instant espresso is the way to go for a quick, potent cup that will wake you up in no time.
- Robusta Coffee — Robusta coffee beans such as HaNoi have about twice as much caffeine as arabica beans, so they can help you create an intense brew.
- Coffee Grinder — To increase extraction and get the best espresso possible, you need a grinder that can get coffee to a very fine consistency. You can use pre-ground coffee, but if the grind isn’t fine, your coffee won’t be as strong.
Step-By-Step Guide: Brewing a Strong Cup of Coffee
Making great espresso is an art form. Here, we’ll walk through the steps of creating strong coffee with your home espresso machine:
- Prepare the Espresso Machine: Fill the water reservoir on your machine and switch it on. Most machines take some time to heat up.
- Grind and measure the coffee: Grind around 18 grams of 100% robusta coffee to a fine grind — similar in consistency to powdered sugar.
- Load the Portafilter: Fill your portafilter with the finely ground robusta and tamp it firmly. This increases the coffee's density, which increases the pressure the machine generates to push water through it — leading to a more concentrated shot.
- Pull the Espresso: Lock the portafilter into the group head of your espresso machine and place a demitasse cup on the drip tray. Pull the shot — aiming for a 25 to 30-second extraction.
- Serve and Enjoy: Your espresso shot should have a dark, thick, smooth base with a light, creamy, caramel-colored crema on top. Enjoy your strong robusta shot as it is or dilute with water (Americano coffee) or steamed milk (latte coffee).
What Coffee to Use for A Strong Brew
When you aim to make a brew with such a potent caffeine content that you’ll feel like you’re flying, keep in mind that not all coffee is equal. Different coffee species have different caffeine levels.
Let’s take a look at the two main coffee species that we know and love — robusta and arabica.
Robusta vs. Arabica
Robusta and arabica are popular for different reasons. Robusta coffee bean is popular for its rich, dark, intense flavors and strong caffeine content. Arabica coffee beans contain more fat and sugar, which means that the beans typically have a smoother, sweeter taste but less caffeine.
To make a truly strong brew, you’ll be best served by peaberry robusta. Robusta coffee beans contain twice as much caffeine as arabica beans.
Brewing Strong Robusta Coffee With a Phin Filter
When brewing robusta beans, keep in mind they’re usually roasted to a very dark level. This is done to bring out their inner sweetness and create a rich and full-bodied flavor.
To get the most flavor out of this dark roast, we recommend brewing it with a traditional Vietnamese phin brewer. A phin is a simple pour-over brewer and is made up of four main pieces — a metal brewing chamber, a filter screen, a gravity press, and a lid or cap.
To brew in the phin, add medium-fine coffee grinds to the brewer and bloom the grounds with a small amount of hot water. Once bloomed, add the rest of the water, followed by the gravity press.
Place the lid on the phin and wait for the brewer to work its magic. The phin takes around 10 minutes to brew coffee. This long brewing time allows a greater amount of caffeine to dissolve into the water, leading to a powerful brew.
Traditionally, coffee brewed with a phin is served with condensed milk to balance out the intense flavor of robusta, but that’s up to you.
Popular Types of Strong Coffee
Drinking strong coffee has long been popular — the intense caffeine hit and flavor punch can work like a reset button, waking you up and clearing your mind in one go.
Here are some particularly popular types of strong coffee:
Espresso
Espresso coffee is the most famous type of strong coffee — the Italian invention uses relatively little actual coffee. However, it does so to make a cup of coffee that’s small but mighty. The masterstroke of the espresso is in the high pressure generated by an espresso machine — around nine bars of pressure.
The increased pressure, paired with piping hot water and finely ground coffee, leads to a more concentrated extraction. This extraction is made even more intense through extremely finely ground coffee, which has a high amount of contact with the brewing water.
These factors work together to create a small drink, typically two ounces for a double, which packs around 100 mg of caffeine on average, the same as a standard cup of black coffee.
Black Drip Coffee
Black coffee is the classic standard for strong coffee. By adding coarse-ground, high-quality robusta coffee to the filter and less water than usual, it’s possible to create a potent, black coffee with a drip coffee maker.
While this will create a stronger cup of coffee, the flavor may be overpowering and dark. To make a black coffee with a balanced flavor and a strong caffeine hit, it’s wise to use a manual pour-over brewer instead — they provide more control.
How To Give The Coffee You’ve Already Got a Boost
If you don’t enjoy the flavors of robusta beans or just don’t have them available, don’t worry — there are things you can do to boost whatever coffee you’re working with.
Here are the main things you can do to get more caffeine and flavor out of your beans:
Use Hotter Water
Before you brew, the flavors and caffeine in your coffee are naturally bonded to other chemicals as part of how the bean grows on the branch. You need to use energy to break those natural bonds and get intense flavors into your coffee, which is why we brew with hot water.
Brewing with hotter water uses more energy, which can lead to some extra flavors and caffeine in the coffee. But don’t go too hot — this can lead to a scorched, bitter brew.
Use Higher Pressure
Using a higher pressure is another way of adding more energy to the brewing process.
If you typically use a French press or a pour-over brewer, switch to a moka pot, espresso machine, or an Aeropress brewer to create a more concentrated shot of coffee.
Use a Finer Grind
Grinding your coffee more finely ensures that there is more contact between the surface area of the coffee grounds and the brewing water.
While this doesn’t increase the energy in a brew, it does allow more of the natural bonds to get hot and wet, potentially leading to a greater amount of flavor dissolving into your cup.
FAQs: How to Make Strong Coffee
Making strong coffee can give you a boost at any time. Let's discuss some FAQs to ensure that the boost kicks in soon.
1. How Do You Make Strong Coffee at Home?
The simplest way to make stronger coffee at home is to change the brewing method you use to one that adds pressure to the coffee. If you’re on a budget, opt for a traditional Vietnamese phin. If you’ve got a little more money to spend, you could use an espresso machine.
2. What Is the Strongest Way to Drink Coffee?
In terms of the most caffeine packed into the smallest punch, the clear winner is instant espresso coffee. A double espresso typically measures around two ounces and contains around 100 mg of caffeine, the same amount as is in a standard cup of black coffee.
3. How Can I Get a Stronger Coffee Flavor?
A good way to get a stronger coffee flavor is to grind the coffee beans you use more finely. This will increase the surface area of the coffee, leading to more of the coffee getting wet and dissolving its flavor into the brew you’re creating.
4. How Can I Make Double Strength Coffee?
To make coffee that’s twice as strong as regular coffee, swap your arabica beans for robusta beans. The robusta species of coffee plant contain roughly twice as much caffeine as arabica beans on average. If you’re already using robusta beans, try a high-pressure extraction method like a phin or an espresso machine.
5. What Is One Method to Get Stronger Coffee?
While there are many ways to get stronger coffee, a surefire way to ensure that your brews pack more of a punch is to use hotter water. This will lead to more of the coffee’s flavor and aroma chemicals dissolving into your brew, creating a very strong drink.
6. Which Method Makes the Strongest Coffee?
The strongest coffee out there is espresso, which packs around 100 mg of caffeine into around two ounces of coffee. However, other methods also provide an intense caffeine hit. For instance, Turkish coffee is made in small portions, just a little larger than an espresso, but with around 60 mg of caffeine.
7. How Can I Increase the Strength of My Coffee?
A good way to increase the strength of your coffee when brewing with an immersion method is to increase the amount of time that you allow the brew to continue. This additional time will allow for more flavor and caffeine to be dissolved from the coffee into your drink, leading to a stronger brew.
8. Is Coffee Better With Milk or Water?
Coffee can be made however you prefer, as long as whatever ends up in the cup is tasty to you. However, diluting coffee with milk or creamer will reduce the amount of caffeine per sip, so if you’re aiming for a powerful cup, try not to add any mix-ins.
9. What Do You Put in Coffee to Make It Stronger?
Technically, you can increase the amount of coffee grounds that you use for each brew to make a stronger cup of coffee. However, doing this can lead to a final cup of coffee that has an overpowering and dark flavor. For that reason, we’d suggest sticking to the water-to-coffee ratio that works for you and changing other factors to increase the amount of flavor and caffeine you extract from the grounds.
10. How Can I Make Coffee Strong but Not Bitter?
Coffee has a naturally bitter flavor thanks to natural plant chemicals that form in the beans while they grow, as well as the dark notes added during roasting. A good way to make a cup of coffee that balances strength with reduced bitterness is to aim for a traditional Vietnamese coffee. Brewing with a phin can make a high-extraction brew that’s packed with flavor and caffeine, and adding the traditional condensed milk can make the drink less bitter.
