Why Dark Roast

[Meshaal]

Hello everyone,

From many articles about roasting coffee, the dark roast also known as French roast or Italian roast means that the original flavours are lost with only high bitterness and body left.

What is the point of roasting many types of green beans with various flavours if the flavour is lost. Even though many people enjoy these kind of roasts still what's the point?

Alternatively, what does speciality coffee shop use for their espresso Dark Roast or light which preserves the original flavour.

 

[edtbjon]

I'd say that most people are used to their cheap ground coffee which they buy at the supermarket. The thing with that coffee is that it's not noway near specialty coffee in terms of quality and usually very one-dimentional in its taste profile. So they blend the coffee to achieve a decent taste. But this cheap coffee(s) also have defects, which will show (taste...) if roasted to light, so roasting it darker hides those defects. What remains is the taste of heavily roasted coffee, with some hints of e.g. chocolate and maybe a fruity note if there is some Ethiopian coffee in the blend. But again, this is what most people are used to have in the morning to wake up, or while having a quick coffee with a cig.
Now, roasting "specialty" coffee dark will of course give you a very good tasting French roast, but as most of the "specialty" taste is burnt away, it will only be slightly better than the French roast at a fraction of the cost.
What you can do as a roaster to make a living, is to try to produce a decent tasting dark roasted coffee which tastes better than the competition. I know it may be boring to you, but it will sell and provide a basis from where you can adress the customers who are interested in your delicious lightly roasted single origins.

 

[Meshaal]

I really appreciate your valuable advice. From what I read, regarding this subject, it seems that most of the people including even me are used to the cheap dark roasted coffee. I'm going to open a coffee shop and will do the roasting in-house in pursue of providing very good quality of coffee. I will invest in a good roasting machine, maybe Probat 5 or maybe Turkish machines as they are closer to me in the Middle East.

Shall I provide, as you said, dark roast or " more premium dark roast" or lightly roasted ones. I have posted a new thread, I would be happy if you share your wide experience in this as well.

Thanks in advance.