Dark Roast Is Not Stronger Coffee

The word "bold" on a bag of dark roast is doing an enormous amount of marketing work, and almost none of it is honest. Darker roasts taste more intense because roasting develops bitter compounds, not because there is more caffeine involved.

Caffeine is remarkably heat-stable. It survives the roast largely intact. What changes is mass: beans lose water and weight the longer they roast, so a scoop of dark roast beans contains slightly fewer beans and marginally less caffeine than the same scoop of light roast.

If you want a cup that hits harder, change your ratio or your brew time. If you want a cup that tastes like roast, buy dark. Those are two different requests and the industry has spent forty years pretending they are one.