Posts Tagged ‘Coffee Roast Levels’

When strolling the aisles of a grocery store, shopping for coffee, sometimes it can be hard to know what you are actually buying.  Big companies like throw around coffee buzz words in order to ensnare the uneducated customer.  It’s hard enough to catch the difference between a “Kona Coffee” and a “Kona Style Coffee”, but discerning between roasts is worse.  What the heck do the terms like “French Roast” or “Italian Roast” mean?  Even if you are able to figure out that a french roast is relatively dark, where does that fall on the Light –> Medium –> Dark scale?  Or how about the City –> Full City –> Full City+ scale?

Unfortunately there is no easy way to explain this.  When coffee went from being a regional ceremonial drink in Ethiopia to an everyday wake-me-up addiction in the West much became muddled.  To make matters worse, companies like Starbucks refrained from using any of these confusing terms and created their own scale which tries to describe each coffee’s level of “boldness”.  This has now multiplied the number of terms to recognize and understand.

In order to understand what’s really going on here, let’s start with two practical examples.  Look at this close-up shot of Rocketfuel Konakaze Blend:

Rocketfuel Konakaze Blend Close-Up. See the oils?

Take a close look.  See how the beans are shiny?  Those are the precious oils from the coffee bean.  The oils are what provide the coffee flavor itself.  The darker a coffee is roasted, the more the oils begin to leave the bean and appear on the outside.  Fundamentally, any coffee with a lot of oil showing on the beans can be considered a darker roast.  Next, take a look at a close-up of Rocketfuel 100% Hawaiian Kona:

Rocketfuel 100% Hawaiian Kona Close-Up. Where are the oils?

In this shot the amount of oil we see is basically zero.  The beans have an almost pastel look to them.  Most would classify the color as medium brown.  This is traditionally referred to as a medium roast (although this particular case in on the lighter side of a medium roast).

These two examples provide a very good frame of reference for most coffees you will run into.  When thinking about roasting this way, what becomes apparent is that the only universal truth in coffee roasting is the look of the bean; it doesn’t lie no matter what label is applied to it.

Taking this concept a bit further, we can learn to apply commonly used terms to a specific shade of brown.  This way when we see a term like “Viennese” or “Full City” we can have an estimate of how dark the beans are roasted.  See the table below:

Chart based on information from Ken David's book, "Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying".

While learning these terms are important for a coffee lover to understand, even more important is to purchase coffee from a roaster that provides clear and consistent information about their product.  So, next time a lot of coffee roast terms are thrown at you, be on your guard.  Watch out for non-specific terms and you’ll be that much closer to the perfect cup!