Flavor Differences Between Light, Medium, and Dark Roast Coffee Beans - Which Roast Level Makes the Best Specialty Coffee?

Coffee beans must be roasted before they can be sold. Raw coffee beans have little to no aroma or taste. However, after roasting, coffee beans develop new and wonderful flavors and aromas. The coffee roasting process involves many factors that affect the flavor and texture of the coffee, such as roasting duration, roasting method, degree of roast, the quantity of beans, and even the roaster's experience and technique. Minute-by-minute variations create significant differences, making roasting an unpredictable yet fascinating craft. In this article, FrontStreet Coffee will discuss the topic of coffee bean roast levels.

Understanding Coffee Roast Levels

Coffee roast levels are divided into many categories. In American terminology, roast levels are specifically divided into eight stages: Light Roast, Cinnamon Roast, Medium Roast, High Roast, City Roast, Full City Roast, French Roast, and Italian Roast.

Generally speaking, light roast coffee beans have a cinnamon-colored surface with strong acidity and a slight aroma; medium roast coffee beans show a chestnut-colored surface with light taste,偏向酸带苦, moderate aroma, and retain the original flavor of coffee beans, often used for American coffee or blended coffee; medium-dark roast beans have a light brown surface with bright and lively taste, balanced acidity and bitterness with lighter acidity, and release the excellent flavors in coffee, representing the standard roast level and also the most popular among consumers; very dark roast beans have a black surface with oily sheen. Before the coffee bean fibers carbonize, the taste becomes strong and complex with robust bitterness and rich roasting and caramelized aromas, mainly popular in Italy and often used for Espresso.

How Roasters Choose Roast Levels

You might already be familiar with the concepts of light, medium, and dark roast coffee. But how do roasters choose the roast level? And what do light and dark roasts mean in terms of flavor? For example, when FrontStreet Coffee roasts a Mandheling coffee bean, they consider what the regional flavor characteristics of this Mandheling coffee are, then FrontStreet Coffee will customize the most suitable roasting curve that best represents its origin's optimal flavor. After roasting, FrontStreet Coffee conducts cupping within 8 to 24 hours. The purpose of cupping is to examine the regional flavor characteristics of this Mandheling coffee bean and whether the roasting curve needs adjustment—this is a repetitive process. When this Mandheling coffee bean's roasting, cupping, and brewing all reach optimal performance and demonstrate regional representativeness, FrontStreet Coffee will list this Mandheling coffee bean for sale.

Roasting is an essential journey for every coffee bean. Generally speaking, baristas treat each batch of beans differently. They test a series of roasting curves until achieving the desired results. Roasters taste each batch of coffee beans like Q graders (coffee quality certifiers) and then decide which roasting method (combination of time and temperature) to adopt. For example, when FrontStreet Coffee roasts Indonesian Mandheling coffee beans, they choose medium-dark roasting to highlight the herbaceous flavors and low acidity, high body regional flavor characteristics based on where Indonesian Mandheling grows and its processing method.

Regional Characteristics and Roast Choices

Meanwhile, when FrontStreet Coffee roasts African beans, such as coffee beans from Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe region, they use light roasting to highlight the floral aromas and lemon-citrus acidity brought by Yirgacheffe's washed processing. Because of different roast levels, each bean's flavor is different, and the question that puzzles everyone might be: which tastes better, dark roast or light-medium roast?

FrontStreet Coffee believes that no roast level is better than another—it completely depends on personal preference. Cafes like Starbucks and others representing the second wave of coffee culture tend to choose flavors brought by dark roasting. Generally speaking, light roast beans have more lively and bright acidity, while dark roast beans have richer body and stronger nutty flavors.

Chemical Changes During Roasting

Different roast levels also affect changes in chemical elements within coffee. The renowned coffee master Mamoru Taguchi discussed in his book that during the roasting process, chlorogenic acid in coffee produces bitter substances, and these substances change differently depending on various roast levels. This explains why most light roast coffee beans present bright and refreshing flavors while dark roasts present richer bitter flavors.

In fact, using light roast coffee beans can make defects in unripe or flawed beans more obvious, thus greatly testing the roaster's technique, and each roaster's method has its unique characteristics. Light roast accounts for about 40% of the global consumer market. The reason it's widely welcomed by coffee enthusiasts is simply that compared to medium-dark roast, light roast better preserves the original beauty of coffee beans' flavor, especially for specialty coffees with distinct aromas and characteristics. Of course, different origins and varieties, due to different bean characteristics, may not be suitable for the same roasting methods.

The Art and Science of Coffee Roasting

People often describe coffee roasting as a technique combining art and science, because roasters must continuously experiment to find the optimal roast level and time to present coffee's best flavors. The variables include weather, moisture content and quality of raw coffee beans, weather conditions during roasting, roaster characteristics, and more. These factors all affect coffee flavor, so beyond making coffee express its best flavor, consistency must also be maintained!

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