Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

When Light Isn't Light: Coffee Roasting Subjectivity

• Oaks, the coffee guy • Season 1 • Episode 169

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In this episode, I delve into the subjective nature of coffee preferences, particularly focusing on light roast coffee. I share my recent experiment with light roasts and the interesting conversation I had with a coffee friend from the Netherlands who challenged my understanding of light roasts. I discuss how coffee roasters often create profiles based on their own preferences rather than what customers might expect, leading to significant variations in what's labeled as "light," "medium," or "dark" roast.

I explore how each person's coffee journey is unique and how personal preferences ultimately dictate what we enjoy. I emphasize that being in a place of exploration and wonder with coffee can be more fulfilling than getting caught up in technical details and measurements. Listeners will learn about the different perspectives in coffee roasting, how to approach coffee with an open mind, and why trusting your own palate is more important than what's written on the coffee bag.

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

[00:00] We live, we live, we live right now. Today is Wednesday, March 5th, 2025. It's early in the morning. We're doing pretty good right now.

[00:15] I hope all is well with you. We're doing pretty good today. First time actually holding the mic in my hand. Got another mic, of course. I need to stop, it's like coffee. Coffee gear. You get one thing, you get another thing. You justify for whatever reason and all that good stuff, right?

[00:37] But yeah, I'm doing pretty good. I hope you're doing pretty good. But that's it. We live, we live, we live right now. I think I stopped saying it for some reason. We'll see. Everything is about getting better and doing things differently.

[00:54] So right now I'm here just talking, just trying to figure things out. And I have a coffee friend that I talk to from time to time. He's in the Netherlands. We talk about coffee business, coffee gear, things we're doing with our coffee business and all that good stuff.

[01:13] I just told him recently, I just finished up a whole series of light roast. Tweaking light roast, trying to find the appreciation of light roast. And I gave him some of the parameters of how I roasted the coffees, how long developmental time was. And he was saying that it wasn't long enough.

[01:35] I see his point, but I guess that's the thing we're gonna be talking about. Your light roast or my light roast or your roaster's light roast or your preference of light roast or any coffee in particular are totally different.

[01:50] Let me explain. Like I said, in this whole experiment, my biggest thing was really trying to taste what coffee is, what I hated about light roast. So before that, I had a parameter, I roasted it different ways and some of it turned out okay.

[02:05] But then I went back and said, okay, these are the new parameters. I want to get a little geekier. I want a consistent roast time for it to actually develop in the green, in the browning phase, whatever. We got some of my terminology I should know this but there's usually three phases, but there's another guy I go by, he goes by two phases, first crack and then after first crack. So that's the way I go about it too, makes more sense.

[02:32] So you develop the coffee, I try to aim for first crack to be about at least nine minutes. The latest is 10 minutes. And then after first crack happens, I usually let it develop for about 30 seconds for light roast, medium roast probably a minute and a half. And then of course, dark roast when it gets to second crack.

[02:55] I judge from there, taste the coffee, analyze it, seeing how well it tastes. And then those are pretty much like the recipes that you do.

[03:06] But when I was doing this whole experiment, I was thinking more so like the Nordic type of roasting. And my green or the actual whole bean readings was really high. It was extremely, extremely lightly roasted coffee.

[03:23] And I wasn't getting any type of sweetness out of coffee, which I still believe that's the way most lightly roasted coffee folks usually have it anyway. All you taste is acidity. There's complexity in the acidity, but there's little to no sweetness on a coffee.

[03:40] And when I was explaining this to him, he was like, "No, no, that's too light. I love light roast. You get sweetness in coffee. You don't get it really much in a medium roast." And I'm like, "What? Who am I talking to?"

[03:55] And this is where coffee is extremely subjective. And I think that's the part, that's the thing that we have to realize too, is that your coffee roaster may be actually roasting this coffee, of course, to the preference, not to your preferences, to theirs, which is interesting, because you would think that they will want to try to roast it to your preference.

[04:18] And I'm sure a lot of them do, but the thing about it is, is that they're the ones who are drinking the coffee all the time. They have their own analytics, not just beyond this whole roast profile, but what you actually buy.

[04:31] Like I go through that a lot too, whenever I'm dealing with people. They'll try a coffee, I'll try a coffee, I'll roast it a certain way, or it is just the nature of the coffee actually. And they probably buy less of it, they don't buy much of it. They have the coffees that they actually buy, and all that good stuff.

[04:49] So those are some of the things that we have to take into consideration when we actually sell coffee to the general public. And a lot of times, my style, or my preference gets in the way, or is the makeup of what you actually get into the cup of coffee that you buy, from either me, or from your roaster, or from the grocery store, or whatever.

[05:11] It doesn't really matter. But do realize that you are getting a personality cup of coffee. Personality beings, that it's the interpretation of the roaster. It's just like anything. They always make fun of engineers, or people in general, in different professions.

[05:30] It's like, you give this problem to a person, or professional, and how many ways, or answers, or approaches do you get for that thing? And this is the same thing. We have to realize is that we're dealing with people, we're dealing with commerce, we're dealing with understanding our customers' preferences.

[05:46] And a lot of times, the biggest thing is that when people choose coffee, they're choosing it based off of what they like, what they see in coffee, what they think coffee is. And I think that's something that we have to realize is that we're not gonna like everything that one person does versus the other. And that's perfectly fine here.

[06:05] I guess what I'm saying is that, go through your journey, see what works for you, see what doesn't work for you. Ask yourself why. Is it the roasters' point of view on this interpretation of this coffee, or is it yours? What don't you like about it? How do you actually drink your coffee? Do you actually taste those tasty notes?

[06:27] Those are the things that you can ask yourself when it comes to actually enjoying coffee. Because at the end of the day, that's all it's about, enjoying coffee. So even though we were going back and forth about this whole thing about, I like this type of coffee, or I roast it this certain way, there's so many different ways to go about it.

[06:44] And I think what I'm going to do is that I'm going to try to do a couple different roasts for different coffees. Probably see if I can hit that medium to light roast, and then see how much sweetness I can get in a cup of coffee. That may be the profile that I actually use when it comes to light roast.

[07:03] But this has been a big eye-opening type of experience that I hope that you think about too, because at the end of the day, a lot of times you don't know really what you're getting out of coffee. You may have different reasons that you do like your coffee. You prepare it differently.

[07:20] But again, it's one of those things where I would say a medium roast to somebody, and they would drink it and they would say, "No, this is a dark roast. This is gross." Or if I will say like a dark roast and they're saying, "No, this is a medium roast. This is a light roasted coffee." Which is bizarre when you think about it.

[07:40] But at the end of the day, that's that person's perspective. And I don't think we'll ever get it right. There's no real grading system out there when it comes to roasting the coffee. And you're telling this person if it's a medium light roast or dark roast, they're gonna interpret that in their own way.

[07:57] Like for instance, we'll use Starbucks, for instance, for an example. A lot of times when people drink Starbucks, they think it's darkly roasted, it's gross. I don't think I'd get a blown roast, but a lot of times whenever I do have Starbucks, and if I do get in the bag, I have the ability to of course get the inner and also the outer bean reading.

[08:20] And at times it comes up to like a medium roast based off the parameters that I'm using. And that's the thing about it. I can use another different device and it may be off by a couple of degrees.

[08:32] And that's what trains your mind. That's what gets you going in a way to where you're like, wait, is this what I'm really tasting? Or is it like the gadgets or is it the calibration tools or is it my palette, isn't my actual preference that I'm picking out in this?

[08:48] And I think that's one of the things that you do have an advantage on. In this whole saga of drinking coffee, you don't have to analyze it the way that I do, or that people like me do. You don't have like all the gear in the world in order to understand this magical being. And I don't even have everything, but I guess what I'm saying here is that when you are in a place of purity, of wonder, you are in a place to where you're just exploring, trying to push your palette, trying to understand your palette, trying to see what this coffee is telling you at this particular time.

[09:25] That's a great place to be. I don't even call it naive or anything like that. I call it a great place to be. I think at times, the place that I'm at, it is, it can be crippling. When you have this instrument to tell you what this tastes like, or this TDS meter to tell you the strength level, and then you're looking at your protocol, looking at the things that you're doing, and you're looking at all the stuff that is coming your way.

[09:55] And I let go quite a bit, but I can't really truly let go. Again, it could be the engineering side of me trying to really understand this coffee. But at the end of the day, I think you are in the best place in this whole coffee journey, meaning that you do understand, you do know about coffee, you do enjoy coffee as much as you possibly can.

[10:18] But the thing about it is, is that the place that you are in is a place of command. You like what you like, you don't like what you don't like. You can try it again, explore even more so or not. You can trust this roaster or not trust this roaster. You can get a different coffee for whatever reason.

[10:36] You don't care about what's on the bag. You don't care if somebody's telling you to brew the coffee this way. You don't care. You can do whatever the hell you want to. And you can see if you like the coffee for what it is for whatever reason.

[10:53] Make it the way you want to. Probably take a tip here and there of what I'm giving or what others are giving. And then you can go on your journey, explore, understand, get to a place where it's fun, it's cool. And then you can do other things in your life.

[11:10] I think you are in the best place to be in this whole journey because it's one of those things where only thing I can do a lot of times is I'm thinking about the numbers. I'm thinking about how this coffee is presented to you, how it's presented to me, how I can make it better instantly.

[11:28] What kind of things I did wrong in the roasting process. What about my beans? Are they fresh enough? Are people gonna pick up on that? What about this particular profile that I did this time? Did I push it too far for my current customers?

[11:42] I'm always thinking about this stuff in a way to where I'm getting away from the beans quite a bit. And I think that's fine. That's where I put myself. But I do want you to realize is that you are in a place to where there's a lot of things that you don't have to worry about.

[11:58] Just get a bag of coffee, open it up, smell it, brew a couple of cups of coffee, and then go on. Write in your notebook if you want to, and then just go on.

[12:10] So there are so many different perspectives out there when we are talking about coffee, about life, because that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about life and what we think about it, what we like about it, and all that good stuff.

[12:24] But at the end of the day, it's our preferences that are ruling, that are controlling, that are pushing us in a place to where we are truly really exploring all the things that we want to in coffee.

[12:37] So with that being said, I hope that you enjoy your cup of coffee today and beyond. And do take everything with hindsight, but at the end of the day, let your palate push you in a direction that you want to go.

[12:52] No matter what a roaster may say about, this is a light roast, this is a medium roast, this is a dark roast, and this is what you taste in a cup of coffee, blueberries, whatever. Trust yourself. Talk to you later, bye.