How do you prefer your beans to be roasted?? Light, Medium, Full, or Double Roast?

[buckhorn_cortez]

Sooo.... how do YOU prefer your beans to be roasted?

It depends upon the beans themselves. Beans can have a variety of roast levels and different flavors will be apparent at each roast level. Generally, high-quality specialty roasters will profile several samples through small test roasts and decide on the best roast level from sampling the test roasts. The direct opposite is Starbucks who used to roast every bean to the same level making the roast flavor what you were tasting and not the individual bean's traits. Since my wife and I roast our own coffee, we will often do a "melange" roast where we will dump beans into the cooling tray from 1st crack through 2nd crack, giving a cross section of flavors from the different roast levels.

In the case of espresso beans, many blends are formulated so that you need to roast into the second crack and then let the beans rest for a number of days before using them. An example of this is Josuma Coffee Malabar Gold. Joseph John, the person who formulated the Malabar Gold espresso blend, recommends roasting 20-30 seconds into 2nd crack, and then resting the beans 7-10 days before using them.

My point is that there is no single answer to the question as each bean type will have a different roasting requirements - including resting the coffee after roasting.

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[CoffeeJunky]

Generally speaking .... some people prefer dark roast and some people prefer light roast.... I rarely roast my beans pass first crack but then again i found little more interesting flavor at medium roast with some of them... but I still prefer light roast to avoid any kind of bitter taste and I also try to avoid having too much tanning in my coffee....

[Seth]

light to medium

[eldub]

CJ: At what temp are you seeing first crack?

Our roaster generally gets beans popping into first crack around 385-390*. 420* is the lightest we roast, but even at that temp, I usually still notice some grainy characteristics in the beans.

For me, 440* would represent our medium roast. I bring our dark roasts up (carefully) to 455-460* and try to find the sweet spot where some bean character is mingled with a bit of smokiness without getting bitter.

[bigred1]

Some coffe is not meant to be dark roast - you can find charts on diff coffees that show the roast levels

[CoffeeJunky]

I get my first crack at around 390 and when FC finishes around 415-425... I would generally stop roasting at that point. But sometimes I would roast little pass 430-445 to get some interesting flavor....

[HIM]

Pretty much a newb compared to others here but feel I have a good palate. Im a big fan of cold brewing as I feel I get a more rounded out flavor and pick up more nuances from the beans. Though lately I've been interested in getting a vacuum coffee maker.