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Lets talk about COFFEE

Medwed

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Asian Robusto coffee tastes better when overroasted. Hmm.
This is pretty much how industrially roasted coffee have been made for 100+ years. Buy cheap and bad, roast it dark, pack it in bags and put a Use by... date on it. Lavazza and Illy in Europe and Starbucks in US have made billions using this method.
 
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A Y

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Starbucks Reserve is not "overroasted." If anything, most of the trendy coffee places underroast. My local roaster does a light- to medium-roast Indonesian that is superb.
 

b1os

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Roasting into the third crack is overroasting. :foo:
 

joshuadowen

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Roasting into second crack is overroasting for anything other than espresso.

+1

Just because you've spent your whole life drinking burnt coffee doesn't make it okay. All of this defending dark roast coffee reminds me of grumpy old men bemoaning "the kids these days." Roasting coffee dark is just a way to mask the defects of low quality coffee. Sure, it's got value commercially, but don't kid yourselves that anything else is going on. Big operations like Starbucks don't even do it on purpose. They have no choice. There's no way to roast 100 lbs of coffee at a time and not burn it.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things wrong with many "third-wave" establishments - the attitude, the mustaches, the plaid - but by and large specialty coffee is leaps and bounds better today than it was a decade ago. Moaning about lighter roast coffees is like moaning about automatic transmissions or power steering.
 

scottcw

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+1

Just because you've spent your whole life drinking burnt coffee doesn't make it okay. All of this defending dark roast coffee reminds me of grumpy old men bemoaning "the kids these days." Roasting coffee dark is just a way to mask the defects of low quality coffee. Sure, it's got value commercially, but don't kid yourselves that anything else is going on. Big operations like Starbucks don't even do it on purpose. They have no choice. There's no way to roast 100 lbs of coffee at a time and not burn it. 

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things wrong with many "third-wave" establishments - the attitude, the mustaches, the plaid - but by and large specialty coffee is leaps and bounds better today than it was a decade ago. Moaning about lighter roast coffees is like moaning about automatic transmissions or power steering. 


Church.
 

b1os

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I've just had some espresso, very likely into the second crack, that was fantastic in a French Press. And yes, I love light filter roasts (I do not like light espresso roasts prepared in an Espresso machine very much though).

Either way, Lavazza and Illy, which Medwed was talking about, mostly sell espresso roasts.
 
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A Y

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Conversely, roasting light is mostly a way to mask the roaster's lack of talent and experience.
 

b1os

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^The most important thing is that you enjoy the coffe. Be it a dark, light or medium roast. Each can be perfected, and each will find its fans. Probably the most import criteria is freshness to discern the quality of the coffees.
 
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scottcw

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Conversely, roasting light is mostly a way to mask the roaster's lack of talent and experience.


Somewhat agreed. A roast that does not reach at least City profile (using Sweet Marias terminology) will likely taste just as bad as over-roasting. And I only stop at City roast for Gesha. Everything else is roasted to between City+ and Full City+ depending on Sweet Marias taste notes and my target.
 

lefty

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Picked up a pound of Nicaraguan coffee while I was there last week.

Finca: Los Suenos, Don Eddy Canales
Variedad: Caturra
Region: Pueblo Nuevo, Esetli
Tueste: Medium

It's bloody wonderful in a press. Less so in a chemex. Wish I grabbed more, but I have two pounds of Peet's Supernatural lined up.

lefty
 

joshuadowen

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Conversely, roasting light is mostly a way to mask the roaster's lack of talent and experience.

This isn't even slightly accurate. Lighter roasts take way more experience to do well. Bare in mind, I'm not claiming that light roasts are always good, just that good coffee is never roasted dark.
 

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