Strongest Coffee At Starbucks? 12 Highest Rated & Most Potent Drinks

crazy by Editorial Staff | Updated on April 1st, 2023

If you are a big coffee drinker like I am. Then you know that Starbucks is a big part of your life. One of the enormous benefits of Starbucks is that it has a wide variety of coffee types.


This is why the question: “what’s the strongest kind of coffee at Starbucks?” is asked by many people.

Starbucks Coffee building during daytime

That’s why I wrote this article where I will reveal to you what the strongest coffee at Starbucks is.

If you’re a coffee fan, you will want to read this. This blog covers the 12 strongest Starbucks coffee drinks — if you’re looking for a supercharged experience, try one of these!

Starbucks disposable cup

What I’m interested in when I compare the Starbucks drinks

Now, depending on a few things, you may be looking for the best Starbucks coffee.

It might taste, it might be roast, or it might be caffeine.

I’m going to go by caffeine, and I’m going to use the Starbucks online menu as a guideline to find out exactly how much each of those drinks gives to coffee lovers.

To make things fair, I contrasted each drink with its capacity of 12 fl oz/354 ml in terms of caffeine. So they’re all compared to this, and they’re also going to specify the amount of caffeine they possess for that particular serving size.

So, if you’re looking for a list of Starbucks strongest coffee, you’ll want to try from the top of our list to the bottom!

For context, per their website, you should realize that one shot of espresso from Starbucks is 75 mg of caffeine per 0.75 oz of drink.

Strongest Coffee At Starbucks

We ranked them all from weakest to strongest based on the caffeine content. 

1. Clover brewed coffee

Image by Starbucks

It is a fair pick, and it may not be in every store of Starbucks. However, clover brewing systems produce coffee like nothing else on this planet, so you are not just paying for Starbucks but also for quality brewing.

It’s not espresso, but it seems like an automated, classic French coffee press. It brews for a particular time, and then it’s properly filtered and served into your cup.

Image by HowStuffWorks

So Clover Brewed Coffee is the strongest Starbucks coffee ever. This coffee will give you 280 mg of caffeine for 12 oz. It is 3.7 times stronger than a single shot of Starbucks espresso and 20 mg of caffeine, more than the second-best Starbucks coffee.

This is enough to say that when you’re on your way to work and want to get up, thank you very much.

Now, you’re not always going to find this Clover coffee at the supermarket, except in the stores with such a machine. This is because the coffee beans employed in these machines are also proprietary and come in limited batches.

So, it’s more like the first-come, first-serve scenario.

If you see a Clover at your nearest Starbucks, make sure you pick up a cup because it’s the best and strongest so far.

2. Starbucks Blonde Roast Whole Bean Coffee — Veranda Blend

Image by Starbucks

The Starbucks Blonde Roast may sound a little weird initially (I’ve only known blonde beers before), but it’s their Veranda blend.

Now, this is a coffee that’s supposed to taste sweeter, less bitter, and more aromatic than any other form of a roast.

It has the highest caffeine count, right after the Clover, at 270 mg per 12 oz.

Blonde Roasts are lifelong, so that you might find this one more often than a Clover.

And… You can make the most robust Starbucks coffee at home!

It’s personalized and goes well with almost every flavoring, but it’s not espresso. Instead, it’s brewed coffee, which is part of the explanation for why its caffeine level is so high.

3. Starbucks Medium Roast Ground Coffee — Pike Place Roast

Image by Starbucks

This is the signature brew of Starbucks and their medium roast.

It’s probably the most popular brewed coffee, and there’s an excellent reason for it to be number three on this list of the most caffeinated beverages.

It has 253 mg of caffeine in the 12 fl oz drink, making it one of the best.

The flavor is better than the Blonde Roast, a little more bitter, but a well-balanced and flavorful drink.

Again, this one is also customizable. It’s served as a hot drink.

4. Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew

This is their lovely cold brew coffee and the strongest Starbucks coffee that isn’t hot. It has been immersed in cold water in small amounts for hours, producing a sweet, spicy aroma.

Even better is that it’s been infused with Nitro, so you’ll get a smooth, velvety, foamy, cold brew just right for an early summer morning.

It looks more like a beer than a coffee with foam and is a little transparent.

But it also shows that coffee can still come as a surprise, and what you assumed you learned about coffee can be flipped on its head.

Of course, there are flavored and tweaked versions of the Nitro Cold Brew, like the next one on this list.

5. Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew with sweet cream

This is the sweetest sister of the Cold Brew, if you can guess.

It has added sweet cream, which raises its calories a little, but the caffeine is still extreme.

Caffeine is 200 mg here, so that you can get a sweeter offer for just 15 mg less than average Nitro.

It is the third and darkest of the Starbucks roasts, and there’s more to it, taste-wise.

It’s steeper in taste and a little more bitter, as is the case for darker roasts.

But it is still a decent drink and guaranteed to yield enough caffeine.

It has 195 mg of caffeine for 12 fl oz of coffee, which is quite a bunch. But, on the other hand, it’s a little pale compared to the other monster-like coffees we’ve discussed.

However, it would help if you recalled that the simple espresso, the basis for most Starbucks products, is 75 mg of caffeine, so consider that at all times.

Featured Dark Roast is also a hot drink, but you’ll find that the drink’s temperature doesn’t matter when you calculate the caffeine content.

7. Starbucks® Blonde Caffè Americano

This variant of the Americano is strong enough in itself.

 The Americano, a classic drink, is a shot of espresso with hot water poured over it.

The Blonde Americano isn’t that popular. However, it’s a thing now, thanks to Starbucks.

Espresso shots are topped with hot water to produce a light layer of crema and are made with our Starbucks® Blonde Roast for an extra-smooth, subtly sweet, and nuanced cup.

The hot and iced variant of the Blonde Americano offers you 170 mg of caffeine for your 12 fl oz drink.

Blondes do have more blasts.

8. Starbucks® Cold Brew Coffee

It’s a classic cold brew coffee the way it was supposed to be.

One of the most frequently ordered beverages, and it’s only going to show how many people enjoy iced drinks.

It’s also a well-caffeinated drink, which comes in at 155 mg of caffeine per 12 fl oz of coffee.

It may sound less spectacular than the others, but trust me when I say that cold-brewed coffee is something else.

And it’s going to get you through the day when summer hits you hard, I promise.

Its brother, the Cold Brew with Cold Foam, will do just as great a job as they offer almost the same amount of caffeine.

9. Caffè Americano

This is the classic, as we all know, and it’s probably never going to be out of style.

While the Blonde roast gives you 170 mg of caffeine, the original darker roast gives you 150 milligrams of caffeine for 12 fl oz.

There are also a few other drinks at this tier, such as Latte Macchiato and Doubleshot Iced Beverage, but they are less well recognized than the classic Americano.

10. Cold Brew with Cascara Cold Foam

Another cold brew, but it’s sweetened with cascara syrup. It gives a reasonable brown sugar and maple tone, not to mention its sweetness.

It appears like that cold brew has found its way into the heart of Starbucks, and all the nice spots have been grabbed.

You’ve noticed that most of these beverages are cold brewed.

Yeah, that’s mainly because a more extended steeping period helps the caffeine release ultimately. But that’s not something you can do with a hot brew, as it will quickly become undrinkable.

Hence, Starbucks brewing their coffee in cold water for 20 hours (as they claim on their website) ensures plenty of time for the caffeine to dissolve into the drink.

This also ensures that most beverages ordered during the warm season will be cold brews.

11. Iced coffee

This is one of the classics and one of Starbucks’ signature drinks.

What’s amusing is that if you have this sweet iced coffee, it’s 120 mg of caffeine per 12 fl oz of coffee.

But if you want it unsweetened, you get less filler (syrup) and eventually wind up with 140 mg of caffeine.

It might matter; it might not matter. But it’s good to know that you’ve got that choice to make.

12. Coffee Frappuccino® Blended Beverage

And now, we’ve come to the frappuccino.

It’s the legendary Starbucks drink but one of the least caffeinated.

This is the easiest one I could find, thinking that the other, more flavored versions could dig more into the caffeine.

Fair enough, when you think of how much milk, cream, and whipped cream you have in your cup, apart from real coffee.

After all, only one espresso shot is used to make a frappuccino, so I don’t believe it can be less than that.

It’s nice to have both the frappuccino and the espresso compared with the other beverages Starbucks offers.

Final thoughts

man wearing black sweatshirt

Now, it’s up to you to drink exactly what you order when you stroll into a Starbucks.

And these are the strongest coffee at Starbucks, and I included the frappuccino, just in case anybody wanted the regular.

If you think your drink needs it, you could always request a double shot of espresso.

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Disclosure: No compensation or free products were received in exchange for writing this review.

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Editorial Staff

The editorial staff at Crazy Coffee Crave is a team of coffee enthusiasts & Baristas who enjoy the one thing we all think about as soon as we get up in the morning. Trusted by thousands of readers worldwide.