Coffee Roast Degree and Bitterness Variations_How Dark Roast Coffee Beans Develop Oils_Dark Roast Coffee Bean Prices

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

The Charm of Light Roast

In China, this kind of "coffee professionalism" has also quietly started a trend due to the growth of the specialty black coffee market. Many independent coffee shop owners, besides promoting a slow-paced lifestyle and patiently serving hand-pour coffee to customers, have also dived into the seemingly bottomless ocean of knowledge that is coffee roasting. Have you noticed? Although there are thousands of coffees on the market, most of which are labeled as medium-dark roast; there are quite a few items in professional small coffee shops that belong to high-priced single-origin light roast coffees.

In fact, using light-roasted coffee beans is very likely to make the defects of unripe or flawed beans more obvious, so it greatly tests the roaster's skills, and each roaster's technique has its own merits. Light roast accounts for about 40% of the global consumer market, and the reason it is widely welcomed by coffee enthusiasts is none other than that compared to medium-dark roast, light roast can better preserve the original flavor beauty of coffee beans, especially for specialty coffees with distinct aromas and characteristics. Of course, different origins and varieties have different bean properties, so suitable roasting methods are also different.

To be able to drink delicious coffee, we have explained coffee brewing methods, coffee processing methods, and coffee roasting. How many more levels does a cup of coffee need to go through? How much professional knowledge and experience are needed to achieve a good cup of coffee?

This answer can only be explained by SCAA's slogan - "Because great coffee doesn't just happen."

The Coffee Roasting Process

To put it simply, the coffee roasting process is like making popcorn. Before roasting, it's hard to swallow, but just like corn kernels, after stir-frying, they pop out white, fluffy, delicious, and sweet popcorn; and coffee roasting is the same. It also needs to go through a heating process to become the coffee we drink in our hands.

During the roasting process, raw coffee beans undergo a continuous and complex chemical reaction, generally referred to as pyrolysis, which after experiencing produces or releases more than 700 chemical substances. It is these chemical substances that bring out the flavor of coffee.

Visualizing the Roasting Process

Through the following video, you can see the raw coffee beans gradually change from bright green (or blue-green) to light yellow, coffee color, and dark coffee after heating.

Start roasting → First crack or second crack

At 38 seconds in the video, the water in the beans turns into steam and bursts out from inside the coffee beans, causing the first crack of the coffee beans.

As the temperature continues to heat, the beans begin to swell, the silver skin peels off, and the color changes from light coffee to darker as the polysaccharides inside begin to caramelize.

Finally, the coffee is distinguished into light roast, medium roast, and dark roast according to different roasting times.

Coffee Roasting Degree and Bitterness Changes

Different roasting degrees also affect the changes of chemical elements in coffee. The famous coffee master Mamoru Taguchi discussed in his book that during the roasting process, chlorogenic acid in coffee produces bitter substances, and these substances will have different changes with different roasting degrees. This is also why most light roast coffee beans present bright and refreshing flavors, while dark roast presents richer bitter flavors.

The roaster will choose suitable roasting degrees according to different raw beans to make the coffee present the best flavor.

The Scientific Approach to Coffee Roasting

People often compare coffee roasting to a technique that combines art and science, because in addition to continuously finding the best roasting degree and time to present coffee flavor through experiments, the variables include weather, moisture content and quality of raw coffee beans, weather during roasting, roaster characteristics, etc. These factors all affect coffee flavor, so in addition to making coffee reflect the best flavor, consistency must also be maintained!

Interestingly, now the scientific and data-driven approach to coffee roasting has matured. It's probably hard to imagine that before the mid-19th century, it was popular in America to roast coffee at home!

Coffee is such a magical, infinitely changing, wonderful drink; next time, when you leisurely sip your cup of coffee, you might as well carefully feel how the roaster interprets his/her perfect roasting curve through the mastery of heat.

Dark Roast Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted dark roast coffee beans: Honduras coffee, Brazilian Red Bourbon coffee, Indonesian Mandheling coffee, etc., all have full guarantees in terms of brand and quality. More importantly, the cost performance is extremely high. A half-pound (227 grams) package costs only about 80-90 yuan. Calculated based on 15 grams of powder per cup of hand-pour coffee, one package can make 15 cups of coffee, and each cup of single-origin coffee only costs about 6 yuan. Compared with the price of dozens of yuan per cup sold in coffee shops, this is extremely cost-effective.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roasting shop in Guangzhou with a small store but diverse bean varieties. You can find various famous and unknown beans, and they also provide online shop services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473