What is "Strong" Coffee? It May Depend on Cultural Context

It found that the phrase strong coffee, or “café forte,” carries layered and often contradictory meanings. The study drew on “social representations theory,” a framework for examining how shared cultural ideas shape individual perception. While famous for its vast, world-leading coffee production, Brazil is also the world’s second-largest coffee-consuming country by volume, behind the United States, with growing demand for specialty coffee.

“Through its scale of production and long-standing traditions, Brazil has helped shape a shared symbolic language around coffee that extends beyond its borders,” the study states. “Within the country, coffee is present in 98% of households and consumed in diverse settings, from morning meals to social gatherings.”

The “Strong” Coffee Sensory Cues

In addition to the in-depth in-person interviews, the study involved tasting three filter-brewed coffees — a “specialty” 100% arabica, a “gourmet” 100% arabica and a “traditional” arabica-robusta blend — prepared to standardized recipes.

Bitterness, dark color, roasted aroma and body were the sensory cues consumers most consistently associated with strength. In a sentence-completion task, strong coffee was most often described as dark, bitter, full-bodied, smoky or astringent.

Some people also tied strength to caffeine’s functional effect, describing it as a “pick-me-up” that helps them wake up and focus. Yet the broader pattern was ambivalent. The same qualities that made a coffee feel strong to one person made it feel harsh, burnt or low-quality to another.

Weakness as a Strength? When asked whether they liked strong coffee, 31.5% of participants described it positively, often citing energy, alertness or stimulation.

Another 34.2% said they disliked strong coffee, associating it with excessive bitterness, poor roasting or lower-quality beans. In the guided tasting, specialty coffee was often perceived as “weak” but pleasant, with balance and aroma carrying more weight.

Traditional coffee, by contrast, was most often described as overly strong, heavily roasted and bitter, sometimes to the point that sugar was needed to make it enjoyable. Gourmet coffee fell somewhere in the middle.

In specialty coffee circles, “strength” is often treated as a technical, manageable attribute, tied to brew ratios, extraction metrics or flavor intensity. This study suggests that the term carries emotional, symbolic and habitual meanings that do not line up neatly with specialty industry language.

“Understanding these interpretations is important for sensory science because consumer vocabulary does not always correspond to standardized sensory descriptors, creating potential gaps between technical evaluation and everyday perception,” the authors wrote. “Understanding how consumers interpret expressions such as ‘strong coffee’ is also relevant for the coffee chain as a whole, including producers, roasters, retailers, and foodservice operators, as these meanings influence expectations, preparation practices and product evaluation.”

Funding came from Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and from CAPES. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

All the authors were affiliated with the University of Campinas. Comments?

Questions? News to share?

Contact DCN’s editors here.