Ipoh white coffee is one of Malaysia's most beloved drinks, a smooth, creamy cup with a devoted following that stretches from Perak kopitiams all the way to 3-in-1 sachets in office pantries nationwide.
Many Malaysians swear it hits harder than regular kopi, convinced the lighter roast and distinctive preparation give it a bigger caffeine punch.
But does Malaysian white coffee really have more caffeine than regular coffee?
Verdict:
FALSE, BUT
Here is the thing about Malaysian white coffee and caffeine: it is not the white coffee that matters. It is what you are comparing it against.
The claim that white coffee has more caffeine than regular coffee is built on a misunderstanding of what the roasting process actually does.
Caffeine does degrade with heat and time during roasting, meaning lighter roasts do retain more caffeine than darker ones.
A 2025 study published in the journal Processes found that light roast samples contained up to three times more caffeine than dark roast samples.
A 2024 study in Scientific Reports confirmed the same result under controlled brewing conditions.
This is where a brief detour helps.
Unlike its Western namesake, which confusingly refers to an extremely lightly roasted bean with no milk involved whatsoever, Ipoh white coffee is a medium roast.
It is lighter than kopi O, but nowhere near the extreme low temperatures that would give it a meaningful caffeine advantage through the roasting process alone.
The roasting argument simply does not apply here.
So what actually determines the caffeine in your cup of white coffee?
The beans. Specifically, the robusta and liberica varieties that form the backbone of traditional kopitiam coffee.
Robusta contains roughly twice the caffeine of arabica by weight, and liberica is no slouch either.
A study by researchers at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, measuring caffeine content across seven locally available Malaysian coffee products using laboratory spectroscopic analysis, found that arabica varieties consistently showed the lowest caffeine concentrations of the group.
Here is the critical point though: a regular kopi O from the same kopitiam uses exactly the same robusta and liberica beans.
It has the same caffeine advantage for exactly the same reason.
The white coffee preparation adds condensed milk and skips the sugar and wheat in the roasting, but it does not add a single milligram of extra caffeine compared to the kopi O sitting next to it on the counter.
So when people say white coffee has more caffeine than regular coffee, what they usually mean, without realising it, is that kopitiam coffee in general has more caffeine than certain other coffees they drink.
And on that front, they are not wrong.
A traditionally brewed cup of robusta kopitiam coffee, white or otherwise, contains roughly 80 to 120 milligrams of caffeine per cup.
A standard instant coffee sachet, the kind that dissolves in a mug, typically delivers between 30 and 80 milligrams depending on the brand, considerably less than what you get from a proper brewed cup.
A single shot of espresso at a cafe comes in at around 60 to 75 milligrams, while an Americano averages around 140 milligrams.
The 3-in-1 white coffee sachets most Malaysians keep at home sit at the lower end of the spectrum, around 30 to 50 milligrams per sachet, because most of what is in the packet is creamer and sugar rather than coffee.
In other words, if your morning 3-in-1 white coffee sachet feels weaker than the glass of white coffee you get at the kopitiam, you are not imagining it.
But the kopitiam version is stronger because it is properly brewed robusta coffee, not because it is white.
The verdict: white coffee does not have more caffeine than regular coffee when compared fairly.
Order a white coffee and a kopi O from the same kopitiam and you are getting roughly the same caffeine from the same beans prepared in slightly different ways. The white is not the variable that matters.
Sources:
1. https://publisher.unimas.my/
2. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-
3. https://www.nature.com/
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
