What are your thoughts on this topic? Are light roasts overrated or justified in the world of specialty coffee? I've recently been roasting my own beans so more exploration with dark roasts is for sure on the horizon for me!
Interesting thoughts. I've been trying speciality beans roasted for espresso as pour overs and in the Aero-Press. Had some lovely results especially with the Aero-Press. I do love light roasts, a lot. But I also love exploring new flavours etc. This vlog has really got me thinking. 😜 Thanks for some new inspiration.
Nice, glad that the video sparked a thought in an area you were already exploring! I think it is that curiosity and interest that you currently are experiencing that I hoped to instil with this video! I'm excited for you and your tastebuds :D
Homeroaster here. Especially dark roasted Ethiopians really are underrated. Try some Yirgacheffe Kochere or Odo Shakiso Guji (natural). For the Kochere, a more modest roast level is better, the Guji really is best at Vienna-light French (city plus 2nd crack for the natural).
Appreciate the comment! I'm a beginner homeroaster and there have been moments where I think I over-roast my beans but it turns out great and translates into an extremely delicious cup! I'll have to try some of those combinations the next time I stock up on green beans :D
I'm going to roast a batch of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe darker in your honor. I only have a washed variety right now but should be adding some naturals in the next few weeks, and I'll experiment with those as well. I have some Kenyas that I'd been roasting really light, and while I enjoyed them, last night I roasted a batch to a solid medium to see if I could get some more sweetness to balance out the intense acidity. Hopefully it is good. I'm not that picky so it will get drunk regardless.
@@danhester4408 ohh I bet it will turn out great! You know what they say in the world of whiskey that also applies here. "If it's brown, drink it down" 😜😜
I fully agree. The fashion that the light roast coffee is better just because supposed experts say so is not allowing people to appreciate the joys of the many darker roasted bean. Love and peace. Tim
Glad you liked the video and it's perspective! It really is quite the snobbery that happens when it comes to roast level and I wish everyone gave all roast levels an equal chance in their cup of coffee. Dark roasts have surprised me tremendously as I used to be one of the light roast snobs!
Interesting, and to make matters more complicated there are levels of light roast starting just before 1st crack and moving through various times after 1st crack. There isn't even consensus as what all the levels are called... Blond, City, City+, Full City and on it goes. My taste is for sort of a medium roast, not very dark but not that light either, ha. Light roasts are somewhat overrated I think. Reading the "experts" we would think it's bad form to roast darker but you have a point on bringing out the best taste in a particular bean. And, that particular taste is wholly personal. To each, his own.
Totally agree that even the terminology we use doesn't give justice to the variety of roast levels that we have in the world of coffee! It's kinda like grind size and "coarse" etc +_+ Smack in the middle is a good place to be, you get to have qualities of both dark and light roasts woven into the beverages you drink! Even though it might be a personal choice, I really do think that there is such a skewed representation of light roast coffee in specialty coffee that the argument becomes one-sided! This video has really made me want to explore dark roasts further haha
I am turning 60 this year and have been drinking dark roasts Turkish brews mostly. I tasted my first Ethiopian light roast last week and have since bought a V-60. I am interested in this new world, but for me the light roast is what is new.
Good luck with your light roast journey, it's never too late to explore something new 👍👍 If you end up having any questions along the way, you know where to find me!
I never liked light roast .. too sour no matter how it's brewed.... I found it weirder when coffee is Bright and fruity.. nooooooo I need that dark roasty hit me right in the face 🤣 I think light roast is never overrated it's just overrated for me ...🌝
That is totally fine and I think that this should be the mentality of coffee drinkers! It's all about giving the different roast levels a proper chance to then find out what your own preferences are!
That’s totally subjective. I much prefer light roast and I enjoy fruity flavours in coffee and find them interesting. It can be an acquired taste too because people just aren’t used to having fruity flavours in their coffee. I don’t enjoy the roastiness of dark roasts. Generally they’re all a bit one dimensional too. Light roasts are more interesting. I do enjoy medium roast coffees that have notes of nuts and chocolate, caramel things like that too, especially for drinking with milk.
French press also but I have never tried it. I had a espresso machine, and a dripper for a long while but I find myself falling back into pour over style once my coffee makers break I just convert them into pour overs lol. I will be buying the "Stanley's Pour Over System" this winter and will post a review on it after a month of use. I have high Hope's because it wont require paper filtration or any use of glass.
Just looked up the Stanley Pour Over System you mentioned and it looks great for camping and one that won't break from a drop or three :P If you like the cups that are a bit more on the gritty sediment side then this metal filter will for sure hit the spot. Let me know how it goes!
Great points in your video, needs more in depth study! I grew up in the Seattle area and it was all about dark roast coffee, Portland also (college), I don't think I even knew about light roasts. This was the 80's and Starbucks was around as were lots of local coffee houses, but info was scarce. Coffee at any good Italian restaurant was definitely a dark roast and some of the best coffee I've ever had. Other comparisons: White Wine = Light Roast, Red Wine = Dark Roast? I prefer Reds by a mile. Burgers/Steak: In this case, I prefer Medium Rare vs. Well Done, love the juicyness, so it's not always that I prefer a slightly burnt taste. However, slightly burnt roasted marshmallows? YES! slight burnt popcorn? YES! LOL The snobbery about LIght Roast being better IS quite amusing though.
Totally agree with all here, there is a lot of snobbery in the world of specialty coffee and it really irks me rawr. It's at the end of the day personal preference and we should be accepting of that. Instead the modern coffee world is forcing a view that one is better than the other...
Hi Paul, good topic! I personally like lighter roasts and don't like bitterness and dark chocolate, simply said. I roast myself and I'm struggling to achieve good light roasts since nothing is easier than over-roasting and produce charcoal. The "Dark Roast" fad lately is another phenomenon widely seen and in my opinion an easy way to market inferior coffee. This brings up another question I'm wondering about - since I'm a graphic designer and image editor I'm familiar with colour perception on devices: how do some guys get this cinnamon, almost orangey coloured beans/grind? Even for espresso. Is it just the lighting? Does it exist or is it an illusion fabricated? (regarding your other post about content creators and their perfect cups) Even if I stop at first crack I never get that colour. Anyways - your tutorials are the most informative, clear and well spoken ones regarding coffee I have seen!!! Thanks
Heyyy Klaus! As you saw from the video, I am also like you where I enjoy lighter roasts. What type of a roasting setup do you have? I have both a popcorn popper and a breadmaker and heatgun setup and it is much easier to get a good light roast with the BM + HG setup since I have more control over the heat and the roasting duration ends up being longer (giving a bigger light roast window). Also, greetings fellow graphic designer (I have a bachelor in GD lol). I would say that the orange tint is many times a bi-product of how it is edited. People love cranking up the saturation for dramatic and aesthetically pleasing reasons lol. Now with that said, a light/medium roast would have a light-brown color that will naturally look very orange with the proper lighting. So there is some truth to the orange bean look but yet again, it's also a lot of photoshop magic happening in the back-end of things +_+ Super glad that you are enjoying and find my videos useful for your coffee brewing journey!! Cheers :D
I love light roast. I got the dark one,but don't know how to brew it nicely,so the taste was so thick for me. It probably depend on how do you brew or the type of roasting. correct me If I am wrong.
It really is just all about tweaking your recipe to accommodate the roast level as you really cannot use the same brewing recipe for a light roast and a dark roast!
I totally agree with you. I've been brewing for almost a decade, became a snob and overcame it (I can relate!), and now I'm enjoying coffees as it is - light, medium, dark, it's fine as long as it's roasted properly and brewed well to extract the best flavors the beans can offer. Thanks for this video!
Seems like we have somewhat have had the same coffee journey timeline! It really is a shame that one has to jump through such hurdles to have the opportunity to try specialty coffee of all roast levels. I really wish it was something that was easier accessed earlier on in someone's coffee journey! Glad you liked the video :D
@@brewinghabits your video is spectacular! It's really good to raise these questions as coffee is really not one-dimensional, in lots of aspects such as taste and brewing. We can kind of also put it this way- light roasts highlight the coffee origin taste, and dark roasts highlight the roaster's experience in bringing out flavors in the coffee on this profile. Pretty exciting, right? As we mature with out coffee journey, we get to accept the ones that we used to say no to. At the end of the day, coffee, just like the catch phrase of a famous burger chain, "Taste is King." 😆😁
Totally agree that coffee is multi-dimensional. What I can link it to is kinda like a long term relationship. There is a constant ebb and flow, the honeymoon phase, opening up, acceptance and so on. An aspect I am totally enamoured by is that the deeper my curiosity goes, the more depth coffee shows me. Magical! Taste is indeed KING :D
Great topic. I just recently, like in the past year, discovered that dark roasts (my favorites at that point) were out of fashion. I just had never really enjoyed lighter roasts, but I also realized their advocates had a point in terms of the roast character overtaking the origin character, the darker you went. But that roast character was something I liked and was what I associated with coffee! Around that time, I started drinking coffee black instead of with cream and sweetener and trying to expand my horizons, and this was accelerated when I started roasting at home. Now I find that I really enjoy lighter roasts, especially for my first cup of the day. It was especially shocking to discover how much I liked East African (Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc.) coffees in light of bad experiences in my past. Maybe they're just a bad combination with dairy, or their natural sweetness is more welcome when you are not adding sugar or sweetener? I'm glad I kept an open mind. I still like to have dark roasts, which I think taste excellent with certain origins (especially Indonesians), and I haven't been able to get on the light espresso train, so I think both ends of the spectrum certainly earn their space in my pantry.
Seems like you have given the whole roasting rainbow a whirl! I can verify the issue with milk and light roasts where past customers have sometimes come back and told me that a really good light roast we had on filter brew tasted sour and bad. Perhaps it has something to do with how milk cuts down a darker roast making it pleasing but kinda just gets expired chunky milk qualities with light roasts +_+ I really think it is the exploration you have had the opportunity to do that I am advocating for. It's awesome that you have managed to try the different roast levels and have locked in on what your tastebuds prefer 👍👍 Keeping an open mind for the win!
I don’t agree that light roasts are overrated. I think there’s a good reason why they’ve taken over the speciality coffee world. There’s a lot more complexity of flavour to them and you can much more clearly taste origin characteristics. Dark roasts are fine but not as interesting. They taste too much of the roasting process itself. Medium roast is good too, especially to go with milk like in a flat white.
I believe it's all about bean quality and not the roast level. Besides if you dont have your brew dialed in then it probably won't matter. Rather its pour over, drip, or espresso. (Krueg isnt the way) Your extraction is key in bring out the best coffee this all subjective because some people like it thick and bitter and others like myself like it smooth and light.
I don't think you can have one without the other. Buying a high quality green bean but roasting it to a dark roast where the roast tastes overshadow the taste quality of the bean will be a disservice to the intention of the green bean. With that said, personal preference does play a big part in what people buy. I just hope that one has the opportunity to try good cups of coffee on both sides of the roast spectrum before making a decision on what one likes the most!
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What are your thoughts on this topic? Are light roasts overrated or justified in the world of specialty coffee?
I've recently been roasting my own beans so more exploration with dark roasts is for sure on the horizon for me!
Interesting thoughts. I've been trying speciality beans roasted for espresso as pour overs and in the Aero-Press. Had some lovely results especially with the Aero-Press.
I do love light roasts, a lot. But I also love exploring new flavours etc.
This vlog has really got me thinking. 😜
Thanks for some new inspiration.
Nice, glad that the video sparked a thought in an area you were already exploring! I think it is that curiosity and interest that you currently are experiencing that I hoped to instil with this video! I'm excited for you and your tastebuds :D
Homeroaster here. Especially dark roasted Ethiopians really are underrated. Try some Yirgacheffe Kochere or Odo Shakiso Guji (natural). For the Kochere, a more modest roast level is better, the Guji really is best at Vienna-light French (city plus 2nd crack for the natural).
Appreciate the comment! I'm a beginner homeroaster and there have been moments where I think I over-roast my beans but it turns out great and translates into an extremely delicious cup! I'll have to try some of those combinations the next time I stock up on green beans :D
I'm going to roast a batch of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe darker in your honor. I only have a washed variety right now but should be adding some naturals in the next few weeks, and I'll experiment with those as well. I have some Kenyas that I'd been roasting really light, and while I enjoyed them, last night I roasted a batch to a solid medium to see if I could get some more sweetness to balance out the intense acidity. Hopefully it is good. I'm not that picky so it will get drunk regardless.
@@danhester4408 ohh I bet it will turn out great! You know what they say in the world of whiskey that also applies here. "If it's brown, drink it down" 😜😜
I fully agree. The fashion that the light roast coffee is better just because supposed experts say so is not allowing people to appreciate the joys of the many darker roasted bean. Love and peace. Tim
Glad you liked the video and it's perspective! It really is quite the snobbery that happens when it comes to roast level and I wish everyone gave all roast levels an equal chance in their cup of coffee.
Dark roasts have surprised me tremendously as I used to be one of the light roast snobs!
Interesting, and to make matters more complicated there are levels of light roast starting just before 1st crack and moving through various times after 1st crack. There isn't even consensus as what all the levels are called... Blond, City, City+, Full City and on it goes. My taste is for sort of a medium roast, not very dark but not that light either, ha. Light roasts are somewhat overrated I think. Reading the "experts" we would think it's bad form to roast darker but you have a point on bringing out the best taste in a particular bean. And, that particular taste is wholly personal. To each, his own.
Totally agree that even the terminology we use doesn't give justice to the variety of roast levels that we have in the world of coffee! It's kinda like grind size and "coarse" etc +_+ Smack in the middle is a good place to be, you get to have qualities of both dark and light roasts woven into the beverages you drink!
Even though it might be a personal choice, I really do think that there is such a skewed representation of light roast coffee in specialty coffee that the argument becomes one-sided! This video has really made me want to explore dark roasts further haha
I am turning 60 this year and have been drinking dark roasts Turkish brews mostly. I tasted my first Ethiopian light roast last week and have since bought a V-60. I am interested in this new world, but for me the light roast is what is new.
Good luck with your light roast journey, it's never too late to explore something new 👍👍 If you end up having any questions along the way, you know where to find me!
I never liked light roast ..
too sour no matter how it's brewed....
I found it weirder when coffee is Bright and fruity.. nooooooo I need that dark roasty hit me right in the face 🤣
I think light roast is never overrated
it's just overrated for me ...🌝
That is totally fine and I think that this should be the mentality of coffee drinkers! It's all about giving the different roast levels a proper chance to then find out what your own preferences are!
Exactly!!!
That’s totally subjective. I much prefer light roast and I enjoy fruity flavours in coffee and find them interesting. It can be an acquired taste too because people just aren’t used to having fruity flavours in their coffee. I don’t enjoy the roastiness of dark roasts. Generally they’re all a bit one dimensional too. Light roasts are more interesting. I do enjoy medium roast coffees that have notes of nuts and chocolate, caramel things like that too, especially for drinking with milk.
French press also but I have never tried it. I had a espresso machine, and a dripper for a long while but I find myself falling back into pour over style once my coffee makers break I just convert them into pour overs lol. I will be buying the "Stanley's Pour Over System" this winter and will post a review on it after a month of use.
I have high Hope's because it wont require paper filtration or any use of glass.
Just looked up the Stanley Pour Over System you mentioned and it looks great for camping and one that won't break from a drop or three :P
If you like the cups that are a bit more on the gritty sediment side then this metal filter will for sure hit the spot. Let me know how it goes!
@@brewinghabits absolutely going to find the perfect grind so there is less sediment... hopefully lol
Great points in your video, needs more in depth study! I grew up in the Seattle area and it was all about dark roast coffee, Portland also (college), I don't think I even knew about light roasts. This was the 80's and Starbucks was around as were lots of local coffee houses, but info was scarce. Coffee at any good Italian restaurant was definitely a dark roast and some of the best coffee I've ever had.
Other comparisons: White Wine = Light Roast, Red Wine = Dark Roast? I prefer Reds by a mile. Burgers/Steak: In this case, I prefer Medium Rare vs. Well Done, love the juicyness, so it's not always that I prefer a slightly burnt taste. However, slightly burnt roasted marshmallows? YES! slight burnt popcorn? YES! LOL
The snobbery about LIght Roast being better IS quite amusing though.
Totally agree with all here, there is a lot of snobbery in the world of specialty coffee and it really irks me rawr. It's at the end of the day personal preference and we should be accepting of that. Instead the modern coffee world is forcing a view that one is better than the other...
Hi Paul, good topic! I personally like lighter roasts and don't like bitterness and dark chocolate, simply said. I roast myself and I'm struggling to achieve good light roasts since nothing is easier than over-roasting and produce charcoal. The "Dark Roast" fad lately is another phenomenon widely seen and in my opinion an easy way to market inferior coffee. This brings up another question I'm wondering about - since I'm a graphic designer and image editor I'm familiar with colour perception on devices: how do some guys get this cinnamon, almost orangey coloured beans/grind? Even for espresso. Is it just the lighting? Does it exist or is it an illusion fabricated? (regarding your other post about content creators and their perfect cups) Even if I stop at first crack I never get that colour. Anyways - your tutorials are the most informative, clear and well spoken ones regarding coffee I have seen!!! Thanks
Heyyy Klaus! As you saw from the video, I am also like you where I enjoy lighter roasts. What type of a roasting setup do you have? I have both a popcorn popper and a breadmaker and heatgun setup and it is much easier to get a good light roast with the BM + HG setup since I have more control over the heat and the roasting duration ends up being longer (giving a bigger light roast window).
Also, greetings fellow graphic designer (I have a bachelor in GD lol). I would say that the orange tint is many times a bi-product of how it is edited. People love cranking up the saturation for dramatic and aesthetically pleasing reasons lol. Now with that said, a light/medium roast would have a light-brown color that will naturally look very orange with the proper lighting. So there is some truth to the orange bean look but yet again, it's also a lot of photoshop magic happening in the back-end of things +_+
Super glad that you are enjoying and find my videos useful for your coffee brewing journey!! Cheers :D
@@brewinghabits Tanks for your reply Paul. I roast with a heat gun and a flour sifter. Works great! How can I attach images?
But which one is healthier, light or dark roasted?
med roasted level coffee needs more light, its a great mid ground for our grounds
I love light roast. I got the dark one,but don't know how to brew it nicely,so the taste was so thick for me. It probably depend on how do you brew or the type of roasting. correct me If I am wrong.
It really is just all about tweaking your recipe to accommodate the roast level as you really cannot use the same brewing recipe for a light roast and a dark roast!
Dark roast coffee is the grossest taste in the world. If there was only dark roast coffee in the world. I’d never drink coffee. Gross.
For you*
I totally agree with you. I've been brewing for almost a decade, became a snob and overcame it (I can relate!), and now I'm enjoying coffees as it is - light, medium, dark, it's fine as long as it's roasted properly and brewed well to extract the best flavors the beans can offer. Thanks for this video!
Seems like we have somewhat have had the same coffee journey timeline! It really is a shame that one has to jump through such hurdles to have the opportunity to try specialty coffee of all roast levels. I really wish it was something that was easier accessed earlier on in someone's coffee journey! Glad you liked the video :D
@@brewinghabits your video is spectacular! It's really good to raise these questions as coffee is really not one-dimensional, in lots of aspects such as taste and brewing. We can kind of also put it this way- light roasts highlight the coffee origin taste, and dark roasts highlight the roaster's experience in bringing out flavors in the coffee on this profile. Pretty exciting, right?
As we mature with out coffee journey, we get to accept the ones that we used to say no to. At the end of the day, coffee, just like the catch phrase of a famous burger chain, "Taste is King." 😆😁
Totally agree that coffee is multi-dimensional. What I can link it to is kinda like a long term relationship. There is a constant ebb and flow, the honeymoon phase, opening up, acceptance and so on. An aspect I am totally enamoured by is that the deeper my curiosity goes, the more depth coffee shows me. Magical!
Taste is indeed KING :D
Great topic. I just recently, like in the past year, discovered that dark roasts (my favorites at that point) were out of fashion. I just had never really enjoyed lighter roasts, but I also realized their advocates had a point in terms of the roast character overtaking the origin character, the darker you went. But that roast character was something I liked and was what I associated with coffee! Around that time, I started drinking coffee black instead of with cream and sweetener and trying to expand my horizons, and this was accelerated when I started roasting at home. Now I find that I really enjoy lighter roasts, especially for my first cup of the day. It was especially shocking to discover how much I liked East African (Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc.) coffees in light of bad experiences in my past. Maybe they're just a bad combination with dairy, or their natural sweetness is more welcome when you are not adding sugar or sweetener? I'm glad I kept an open mind. I still like to have dark roasts, which I think taste excellent with certain origins (especially Indonesians), and I haven't been able to get on the light espresso train, so I think both ends of the spectrum certainly earn their space in my pantry.
Seems like you have given the whole roasting rainbow a whirl! I can verify the issue with milk and light roasts where past customers have sometimes come back and told me that a really good light roast we had on filter brew tasted sour and bad. Perhaps it has something to do with how milk cuts down a darker roast making it pleasing but kinda just gets expired chunky milk qualities with light roasts +_+
I really think it is the exploration you have had the opportunity to do that I am advocating for. It's awesome that you have managed to try the different roast levels and have locked in on what your tastebuds prefer 👍👍 Keeping an open mind for the win!
I don’t agree that light roasts are overrated. I think there’s a good reason why they’ve taken over the speciality coffee world. There’s a lot more complexity of flavour to them and you can much more clearly taste origin characteristics. Dark roasts are fine but not as interesting. They taste too much of the roasting process itself. Medium roast is good too, especially to go with milk like in a flat white.
I love light roasted coffee no matter how people rate it
Light roast is great as long as I don't have to drink it. Dark all the way for me.
TL;DR "dark roast gets flack because it sucks"
I believe it's all about bean quality and not the roast level. Besides if you dont have your brew dialed in then it probably won't matter. Rather its pour over, drip, or espresso. (Krueg isnt the way) Your extraction is key in bring out the best coffee this all subjective because some people like it thick and bitter and others like myself like it smooth and light.
I don't think you can have one without the other. Buying a high quality green bean but roasting it to a dark roast where the roast tastes overshadow the taste quality of the bean will be a disservice to the intention of the green bean. With that said, personal preference does play a big part in what people buy. I just hope that one has the opportunity to try good cups of coffee on both sides of the roast spectrum before making a decision on what one likes the most!
You like the smell of hot coffee?