The Light Roast Challenge: Finding Balance in Acidity

In this episode, I deep dive into my week-long experiment with light roasted coffees. I challenged myself to drink exclusively light roasts across multiple brewing methods—pour over, AeroPress, immersion, Moka pot—and share my honest findings. I explore my theory that light roasts struggle to deliver the sweetness that creates balance in coffee, instead offering complex layers of acidity. Throughout the episode, I taste three different light roast espressos (Colombian, Guatemalan, and Ethiopian) to illustrate my points and explain why I believe light roasts actually shine best in espresso form despite not traditionally being my preference. Listeners will learn about extraction percentages, how different brewing methods affect flavor clarity, and why it's valuable to understand coffee styles outside your comfort zone—even if they don't become your everyday preference.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:22 My week-long light roast challenge
• 2:40 Sweetness and balance in coffee
• 4:15 Light roast and extraction percentages
• 6:30 Results from different coffee origins
• 8:45 Pushing extraction with light roasts
• 10:20 Brewing methods and flavor clarity
• 12:30 Espresso tasting: Colombian coffee
• 14:05 Espresso tasting: Guatemalan coffee
• 15:40 Espresso tasting: Ethiopian coffee

Transcript

[00:00] Today is March 2nd, 2025. We're doing pretty good right now. We're going to get right into the topic. I have a theory when it comes to this whole light roasted coffee sensation. Let's take a sip first.

[00:28] Wow. It's not even perfectly dialed in either. This is the Colombian that I had last year. If you know, you know. If you don't, I couldn't really find sweetness on this coffee. I tried so many different ways and started to get a little bit more as I kept playing around with the coffee. I never really found it in light roast, and I believe that's the issue with light roast. It's very hard to find sweetness in the coffee. You'll get these different elements of complexity in acidity, so many different things going on in your mouth.

[01:05] As I'm drinking it right now as an espresso, that's exactly what I'm getting. Throughout the whole week, I challenged myself to drink light roasted coffees. I roasted five different variations of light roasted coffees. I did it as a pour over, AeroPress, immersion. I tried to do a percolator, but it didn't really work out. Moka pot turned out really well.

[01:40] One thing that I was trying to really find and chase is that sweetness. The reason why I keep saying getting back to the sweetness part is because sweetness adds balance in coffee. I'm not saying this would be 50/50, but whenever you actually eat a piece of fruit for a really good example, not all the time, but at times when you really enjoy a piece of fruit, it's because it has some type of balance. It has some makeup of acidity and also sweetness.

[02:15] For instance, I'm eating some tangerines or clementines and they're sometimes hit or miss. It's one of those things where I know if it doesn't taste as good as I would like, it's because it's missing one of the characteristics of acidity, of sweetness, of whatever that combination may be. Coffee at the end of the day is fruit, right? It's a liquid fruit.

[02:45] Even though I was trying so many different recipes, I couldn't coax out that sweetness. The theory that I have going for me right now is that light roast really shines well as an espresso. This coffee is lively, it's tasty. I do get those elements of not sweetness, but the complexity of the acidity.

[03:10] That's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned about this whole experiment. If you're chasing the degree, the complexity, the differences of really deciphering what the acidity is telling you, drink light roast. You'll get all the different complexities, different elements of coffee. As you delve into different brewing techniques, you will get different things that come out of the coffee.

[04:05] One espresso down, we got two more to go. We are literally drinking three espressos out of this whole thing to kind of conclude this whole light roast saga. I did notice that some of the coffees that I was using for this whole light roast thing was my Mexican coffee and also my Brazilian coffee. Those presented a more light, delicate type of acidity. It wasn't as pronounced as I would like it to be.

[04:40] These coffees that I'm drinking right now are the ones that are a little bit more amped up or more geared towards light roasted coffees. It's my Guatemalan that I had a long time ago, and then Ethiopian, which we're going to be drinking soon. The one that I just drank was a Colombian, which seemed a little bit more out there with the type of chemistry of the acidity on the coffee.

[05:15] The Mexican coffee and the Brazilian coffees presented a more delicate type of acidity, not something somebody will want in a light roasted coffee if you're drinking it black. If you're drinking it with cream or whatever, you just want something with the least amount of acidity, especially with additives.

[05:45] One of the biggest things that got me back to understanding light roast even more are two things. One is the grind size that I was using out of the old grinder. I know for sure, at least for my pour over methods and techniques, that I can push it all the way to four on the setting on a regular burr set and it's able to extract coffee.

[06:15] I was able to extract 23, 24, even 25% extractions, which is bizarre, because I haven't done that in a long time. I usually stay in the 19 to 21 percentage of extraction. The reason I do that is because I mainly drink medium roast and dark roast.

[06:42] If you tend to push those coffees more than you should, you're going to introduce bitter flavors. Bitter flavors isn't necessarily bad to me, but when it takes over and that's all you really taste, you can't decipher what you're trying to taste, that's where the problem comes into play.

[07:12] In medium roast and dark roast, you can get that because the coffee is easier to extract. In a lighter roast, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's harder to extract, but you can push it, you can beat the crap out of it, and it'll still be presenting something to you. You're tasting different things, different complexities because of the nature of light roast.

[07:38] You can push it more because there's flavors that are still there. Throughout my whole experience, even by extracting a lot more of the coffees compared to the normal roast degrees that I normally do, it was amazing. I haven't dealt with that in such a long time because I don't really do light roast.

[08:10] That was one of the things that was really cool about coming back to my roots of understanding tasting light roast. I'm going to be drinking a lot of medium roast, a lot of dark roast just to clean my palate up and really understand balance of sweetness and acidity even more.

[08:35] Let's drink this Guatemalan that I'm about to drink right now. Same thing. Intense, different degrees of acidity. Light, it's tea-like, which I don't really like. But I guess that allows you to really taste a little bit more of the clarity of what you're trying to taste – different degrees of acidity.

[09:15] The last one is the Ethiopian. But that's my theory before we drink this Ethiopian coffee. To kind of conclude everything, light roast, I believe, shines in espresso because it makes the coffee even more intense.

[09:40] I did find some success in the pour over method. But even to an extent, that was even more intense compared to what I would actually like to drink. One thing that I did realize, especially coming from like the Bonavita dripper or the clever dripper, is that the intensity is dialed down quite a bit in those immersion methods. So it's not as intense.

[10:12] It allows you to actually taste different elements of the coffee. What I mean is it doesn't hit you all at once. When you push extraction a little too much in a lighter roast, it doesn't get cloudy. It just kind of all comes together, and it's hard for you to pick which flavor is really coming to you.

[10:45] I haven't really said the actual fruit characteristics because at times that part is a little too elusive to me, especially drinking lighter roast. Sometimes people get a little lazy and just say that they just taste acidity, just taste lemons and that's it. But there's also a lot of different degrees of acidity.

[11:15] For instance, yesterday I had some blackberries. When I had the blackberries, they had a little bit of sweetness. And then on the aftertaste, it tasted more like a grapefruit type of acidity. It's easy for me to say grapefruity type of acidity.

[11:38] When we taste and analyze coffee, even more so when we actually eat different fruits, then we can understand how different fruits probably play a role in our understanding of what we're actually drinking.

[11:55] In this whole case of me diving into light roast and drinking it for what it is, it was very hard for me to decipher exactly what I was really tasting. I did get a little bit of sweetness in the Guatemalan to an extent, but most of it was acidity.

[12:20] I can tell a little bit better in immersion brew because I wasn't introduced with all these flavors in my mouth all at once. If you're trying to really understand coffee a little bit more, I would highly suggest that you start with immersion brew, like a clever dripper, because it doesn't hit you all at once.

[12:45] Now you can actually appreciate some of those acidities that do come into the cup. But if you want to start intensifying it, you will start to use the pour overs, the V60s, April Brewers of the world to really understand that this is what coffee can taste like. Let's go ahead and drink this last cup of coffee.

[13:20] Light roast shines in espresso. It really does. It really puts everything together. It's even more intense, of course, than the pour over. But the way it does it, it makes it more heavy, makes it more palatable. And you're just drinking it in this amount of coffee.

[13:50] I'm not, as you know, a big fan of light roast. I'm not that gear crazy or focused on espresso. But I do understand why things are what they are and what it does for a person to feel and taste that type of coffee in those brewing mechanisms.

[14:15] It's interesting to go through the whole gamut of different brewers, different techniques, challenging and pushing my palette to understand something that I don't really care about. To also give you this information of trying to get to the place where you can decipher where you really want to go with it.

[14:40] We don't have to love everything. But I think it's very important that we challenge ourselves to try to understand it the best way that we can. So I am enjoying this Ethiopian espresso. But I do wish it was sweeter, because to me, there's no real balance in this whole light roasted situation.

[15:10] I do understand the allure of why people like espresso or light roasted coffees. But it's still not my cup of tea. And that's perfectly fine. It's okay for us to be honest and objective with that and to understand the other side of it.

[15:30] That's my biggest takeaway, understanding why people like certain things and the reason why. Even though I was getting frustrated when I was brewing at times, it did give me a different opportunity to push myself to stretch the way that I look at coffee.

[16:00] For now, light roasted sake is done. But it's been great. I've been loving the chance to see it for what it is. But again, I can't wait to get back to the medium roast, to the dark roast, and to drinking those coffees and finding the true balance of what it really is when we drink our cup of coffee, whichever way that we do it.

[16:30] This is Okeet Everyday being signing off. Talk to you later. Bye.