The Most Caffeinated Coffee Brand Is a Grocery Store Staple

Consumer Reports tested instant and store-bought coffees to find the most likely to get you going.

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While there are many reasons to love coffee, one of the most popular has to be its caffeine, which many drinkers need to get up and keep moving throughout the day. And I speak from personal experience, as I used to drink 10 to 12 cups of coffee a day to keep me awake, especially when working into the night.

But whether you need that caffeine or want to avoid it, it’s important to know just how much you’re getting in your coffee. The FDA recommends a daily caffeine limit of 400mg, but it can be hard to know when you’re going over the limit, as different brands and blends can have some wild variations in their caffeine amounts.

So, Consumer Reports went through and tested fourteen instant and ground coffees, and four types of store-bought coffees and tested them for their caffeine levels. Here’s what they found.

Most Caffeinated Instant Coffee: Café Bustelo Espresso Ground Coffee

Remember that 400mg recommended daily limit? Well, one small, 8oz cup of coffee made with Cafe Bustelo (one of our favorite instant coffee brands) will get you 175mg grams towards your goal, while a large, 24oz cup will get you 524mg, well past that daily limit. By comparison, a small cup of Folger’s Classic Roast Instant Coffee will only give you 57 grams, while a large has only 170, less than even that small glass of Café Bustelo.

Most Caffeinated Store-Bought Coffee: Peet’s Coffee Major Dickason’s Blend Dark Roast

If you’re grabbing your coffee from a store, you’ll grab the caffeine from this dark roast blend, with a small, 12oz cup giving you 281mg and a large, 20oz cup going over that limit again at 468mg. But that’s only slightly worse than the runner-up, Starbucks Pike Place Medium Roast, which gives 248mg in a small cup and 414 in a large. And the fact that you can drink more than the daily recommended amount of caffeine in one cup is scary enough to keep you up at night, right?