Caribou Coffee is the Minnesota-born chain with the cabin-style cafes and a loyal following across the Midwest, and its menu has a reputation among regulars for hitting harder than the usual coffee shop order. The reputation turns out to be mostly earned. Published figures put a medium brewed coffee at 305mg, and a large Depth Charge, which is brewed coffee with espresso added, at 445mg, which is more than the 400mg daily figure the FDA cites for most healthy adults, in a single cup.
This guide lays out the numbers by drink and size, shows where the published figures contradict each other (they do, in a few places), and works through what a realistic Caribou day looks like against that 400mg line. It follows the same format as this site’s breakdowns of Dutch Bros, Starbucks brewed coffee and Dunkin’, so you can compare chains directly.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure below comes from Caffeine Informer’s Caribou pages. Its brewed-coffee page cites Caribou’s own website as the source, and its canned cold brew page cites “cariboucoffee.com and customer service.” Its complete guide says its data comes from Caribou’s official nutrition information and notes that estimates for drinks with added cocoa are marked with asterisks. None of the pages gives a date for when the numbers were collected.
That matters for two reasons. First, these are company-reported figures, not independent lab assays, and brewed coffee varies from batch to batch in any real shop. Second, I could not open Caribou’s own nutrition pages during research, so I am relying on a secondary compiler that says it copied from them. Treat the numbers as a good guide to the menu, not as a guarantee for the cup in your hand.
Brewed coffee: roughly 19mg per ounce at every size
Caribou’s plain brewed coffee is the cleanest data on the menu, because it scales almost perfectly with volume.
| Size | Volume | Caffeine | Per fl oz |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 12 fl oz | 230mg | About 19.2mg |
| Medium | 16 fl oz | 305mg | About 19.1mg |
| Large | 20 fl oz | 385mg | About 19.3mg |
A flat 19mg per fluid ounce is the same concentration this site calculated for a Grande Starbucks Pike Place (310mg in 16 oz, about 19.4mg an ounce) in the Starbucks brewed coffee breakdown. In other words, Caribou drip sits at the strong end of the big chains, level with Starbucks and well above Dunkin’ (210mg in 14 oz, 15mg an ounce) and the Dutch Bros large coffee (187mg in 20 oz, about 9.4mg an ounce).
The practical consequence is that size is the lever. A large brewed coffee at 385mg is already 96 percent of the 400mg reference by itself.
Decaf
Caffeine Informer lists brewed decaf at 4mg for a small, 5mg for a medium and 6mg for a large. That is in line with the general range of 2 to 4mg per 8 fl oz cup that it gives for decaf arabica on its K-Cup decaf page, which also cites Keurig and its own brewed-decaf entry. Decaf is not zero, which this site’s decaf caffeine guide covers in detail. Three large decafs would still add up to under 20mg, which is irrelevant for most people and worth knowing if you are very sensitive.
The Depth Charge: the one that breaks the ceiling
The Depth Charge is Caribou’s brewed coffee with a shot of espresso dropped in. The complete guide lists it at:
| Size | Caffeine |
|---|---|
| Small | 290mg |
| Medium | 370mg |
| Large | 445mg |
Compare that with plain brewed coffee at the same sizes (230mg, 305mg, 385mg) and the espresso adds a consistent 60mg. That is close to the roughly 63mg per shot baseline in this site’s espresso shot analysis, which is a helpful sanity check: the extra shot is a typical shot, and the Depth Charge is simply brewed coffee plus one. The Caffeine Informer brewed-coffee page mentions the Depth Charge as including “a shot of espresso for even more caffeine” without giving numbers, so the size figures here come from the complete guide.
The large Depth Charge is the only standard hot drink in these tables that lands above 400mg on its own.
Espresso drinks: where the published numbers stop agreeing
This is the section where I would be most cautious. Caffeine Informer’s complete guide lists the espresso-based drinks like this:
| Drink | Small | Medium | Large |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latte | 180mg | 180mg | 270mg |
| Cappuccino | 180mg | 270mg | 360mg |
| Americano | 180mg | 270mg | 360mg |
| Mocha | 190mg | 195mg | 290mg |
| Espresso | 180mg | 270mg | 360mg |
The cappuccino, americano and espresso rows form a neat pattern: 180mg, 270mg, 360mg, which is steps of 90mg. If each step is one more shot, that implies about 90mg per shot, though the source does not state shot counts, so that is an inference, not a fact. The guide itself says Caribou’s espresso shots are “more than double what would be typical” at other coffee shops, and 90mg a shot against the typical 63mg figure would be roughly 40 percent higher, not double. The claim in the source and the arithmetic do not quite fit, and the source gives no comparison numbers to resolve it.
Two rows look off. The latte shows the same 180mg for small and medium, and the mocha shows 190mg and 195mg for small and medium. Both look like possible transcription slips or real recipe quirks (a medium that gets the same shots as a small is plausible), and I cannot tell which from the page. For comparison, the same guide’s iced mocha reads 190mg, 285mg and 380mg across the three sizes, a smooth progression that makes the hot mocha medium look suspicious.
My advice: use the cappuccino, americano and espresso rows with reasonable confidence, treat the latte and mocha medium figures as uncertain, and if the exact number matters, ask the barista how many shots go into your size.
Cold drinks
The same guide lists these cold and iced items:
- Iced Americano: 270mg small, 360mg medium, 450mg large.
- Iced Mocha: 190mg small, 285mg medium, 380mg large.
- Nitro Cold Press: 320mg, small only.
- Iced Classic Black Tea: 95mg small, 195mg medium, 290mg large.
Two points stand out. The iced americano is a full 90mg above the hot americano at every size (270 versus 180 at small, 360 versus 270 at medium, 450 versus 360 at large), which suggests the iced version is built with an extra shot, or the numbers come from different recipes. The source does not explain it. And the large iced americano at 450mg is another single drink that exceeds the 400mg reference.
The tea row is also worth a second look. A jump from 95mg to 195mg between small and medium is more than a size change would normally explain, so treat the black tea figures as approximate. The takeaway that does hold up is the one the guide itself makes: a large black iced tea at 290mg is not a low-caffeine choice.
The cans: 150 to 177mg, and an ounce mismatch
Caribou also sells canned cold brew. Caffeine Informer’s cold brew page lists these figures for an 11.5 fl oz can:
| Can | Caffeine |
|---|---|
| Black cold brew | 177mg |
| Crafted Original | 165mg |
| Crafted Vanilla | 150mg |
The page notes that caffeine varies by flavor and that the headline number is for the Black variety. The complete guide repeats the 177mg and 165mg figures but describes the cans as 12 fl oz, and adds a “Caribou plus Espresso” can at 159mg per 12 fl oz.
So the two Caffeine Informer pages disagree about whether the can is 11.5 or 12 ounces. The difference is small (about 4 percent), and the milligram figures themselves agree, so the practical effect is that the per-ounce number is about 15.4mg at 11.5 oz or 14.8mg at 12 oz. Either way, the Caribou can is considerably weaker per ounce than the shop brewed coffee, and well below the Dutch Bros can’s roughly 25mg an ounce covered in the Dutch Bros guide.
K-Cups and pods
Readers often ask about Caribou K-Cups, such as Daybreak (a light roast) or Obsidian (a dark roast). I did not find a caffeine figure for either in a source I could open, and retail listings describe flavor, not milligrams. The honest answer is to check the box or ask Caribou directly. For the general picture of what a pod delivers, this site’s K-Cup caffeine guide collects the published ranges. Dark roast does not reliably mean more or less caffeine; roast level moves the number far less than the amount of coffee and the cup size does.
How Caribou compares per ounce
| Drink | Size | Caffeine | Per fl oz |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch Bros Dutch Coffee, large | 20 oz | 187mg | About 9.4mg |
| Dunkin’ brewed | 14 oz | 210mg | 15.0mg |
| Caribou canned Crafted Original | 11.5 oz | 165mg | About 14.3mg |
| Caribou canned Black | 11.5 oz | 177mg | About 15.4mg |
| Caribou brewed, medium | 16 oz | 305mg | About 19.1mg |
| Starbucks Grande Pike Place | 16 oz | 310mg | About 19.4mg |
| Caribou large Depth Charge (assuming a 20 oz cup) | 20 oz | 445mg | About 22.3mg |
The Dunkin’, Dutch Bros and Starbucks figures come from the posts linked above. The Depth Charge row assumes the large is 20 fl oz like the brewed large, which the source does not state directly for that drink.
Worked example: a Caribou day against 400mg
The FDA cites 400mg a day, which it describes as about two to three 12-fl-oz cups of coffee, as an amount not generally associated with negative effects for most adults. It also stresses that “too much” varies with body weight, medications, medical conditions and individual sensitivity. Here is how some common Caribou orders stack up.
- Medium brewed plus a can in the afternoon. 305mg + 165mg (Crafted Original) = 470mg. That is 70mg over the line, from two ordinary purchases.
- Small brewed plus a vanilla can. 230mg + 150mg = 380mg. Under the line, with almost no room left.
- Large Depth Charge alone. 445mg. Over the line before lunch.
- Medium cappuccino plus a small brewed decaf. 270mg + 4mg = 274mg, leaving about 126mg of room.
- Small latte, twice. 180mg + 180mg = 360mg, which is fine on paper, though remember the latte figures carry the most uncertainty.
The pattern is that Caribou’s menu makes it easy to pass 400mg with just two items, mostly because both the espresso and the drip are relatively concentrated. If you want to keep the Caribou habit and stay under the line, the lowest-effort fix is to move one size down, because brewed coffee scales so evenly with volume: dropping from large to medium cuts 80mg, and from medium to small cuts 75mg.
Who should be careful
Anyone sensitive to caffeine should plan from the high numbers, not the low ones. A single large dose can feel worse than the same total spread across the day, and this site’s coffee and anxiety guide explains why. If you decide to cut back from a multi-cup Caribou habit, the caffeine withdrawal timeline describes what to expect and how long it lasts. The FDA also advises people who are pregnant, trying to become pregnant, or breastfeeding, and those taking certain medications, to talk to a health care provider about their limit.
Common mistakes reading a Caribou number
Treating a compiled database entry as a lab result is the first. Every Caffeine Informer figure here traces back to Caribou’s own website or nutrition information, and the company can change recipes without the database noticing. Assuming that “small” always means the same as the neighboring chain’s small is the second, since Caribou’s sizes are 12, 16 and 20 fl oz and brewed coffee runs at about 19mg an ounce. Trusting a single odd row is the third: the latte and mocha mediums and the iced tea medium all look irregular, and I would check them before relying on them. Assuming the can matches the cafe drink is the fourth, because the can is far weaker per ounce. Finally, assuming the large is the sensible default is a common trap, since the large brewed is 385mg and the large Depth Charge and iced americano both pass 400mg.
Common questions
How much caffeine is in a Caribou Coffee brewed coffee? 230mg for a small (12 fl oz), 305mg for a medium (16 fl oz) and 385mg for a large (20 fl oz), per Caffeine Informer’s figures sourced from Caribou.
How much caffeine is in a Caribou Depth Charge? 290mg small, 370mg medium and 445mg large, per Caffeine Informer’s complete guide. It is brewed coffee with an added espresso shot.
How much caffeine is in Caribou canned cold brew? 177mg for the Black variety, 165mg for Crafted Original and 150mg for Crafted Vanilla, per Caffeine Informer. The pages disagree on whether the can is 11.5 or 12 fl oz.
How much caffeine is in Caribou decaf? Between 4mg and 6mg depending on size, per Caffeine Informer’s table. Decaf is low in caffeine but not caffeine-free.
How much caffeine is in a Caribou K-Cup? I could not find a published figure for Caribou’s Daybreak or Obsidian pods in a source I could open. Check the packaging, and see the K-Cup caffeine guide for general ranges.
Is Caribou coffee stronger than Starbucks? At medium and Grande, about the same. Caribou’s 305mg in 16 oz and Starbucks’ 310mg in 16 oz work out to nearly identical concentrations, around 19mg an ounce.
Does Caribou have more caffeine than Dunkin’? Per ounce, yes. Caribou brewed is about 19mg an ounce against Dunkin’s 15mg an ounce in this site’s Dunkin’ figures.
Can I drink a large Caribou coffee every day? A large brewed coffee at 385mg is just under the FDA’s 400mg reference for most healthy adults, which leaves no room for anything else caffeinated. Individual tolerance varies, so this is a general reference, not personal advice.
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