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I don't want to start a war but I think labeling coffee by the roast level is far too simplistic for most people. The roast level as you've described really jus

I don't want to start a war but I think labeling coffee by the roast level is far too simplistic for most people. The roast level as you've described really just tells us what the bean looks like, i.e light medium & dark. I'm a huge proponent of lighter roasts, but not for the color. More because higher roast levels get in the way of the beautiful flavor inherent in good coffee (the corollary of this is that it's easy to hide bad coffee in over roasting - hello Starbucks) The flavor profiles aren't "imaginative descriptions". Yes they are very subjective, but that doesn't mean they do not exist, just that our senses aren't good at detecting & describing them. To give an example, I run an online coffee company and over the last few months we've shipped coffees that genuinely smell everything from a Papua New Guinea that smelled incredibly like chocolate & nuts through to a Yirg that smelled uncannily like strawberries & cream. Honestly I thought the last one was BS until I smelled it. I wouldn't consider that I have an amazing sense of smell but I can tell the difference between three or four unshipped types of coffee that we have in our packing space by smelling the degassing valve. tl;dr There are so many differences between coffee beans for a description of the roast level to adequately describe them

vladgur 13y ago
There was a freakonomics episode called 'Do more expensive wines taste better' which essentially presented wine experts with a a blind test of different wines and they were not able to tell which ones were cheaper and which ones were pricier based on the 'flavor profiles' that they detected. While it doesnt mean that there are no flavor profiles on roasted coffee beans, what it means is detection of the flavor profile is probably very subjective. In my experience flavor profiles are rarely guaranteed between roasts, one thing i could always tell if this particular roast is acidic or too dark. This is just my perception. I usually make my coffee using a Capresso Burr grinder and aeropress. You can usually find me at whole foods sniffing the timestamped paper bags of coffee until i settle on something that doesnt smell too burnt or too acidic.

vladgur 13y ago

There was a freakonomics episode called 'Do more expensive wines taste better' which essentially presented wine experts with a a blind test of different wines and they were not able to tell which ones were cheaper and which ones were pricier based on the 'flavor profiles' that they detected. While it doesnt mean that there are no flavor profiles on roasted coffee beans, what it means is detection of the flavor profile is probably very subjective. In my experience flavor profiles are rarely guaranteed between roasts, one thing i could always tell if this particular roast is acidic or too dark. This is just my perception. I usually make my coffee using a Capresso Burr grinder and aeropress. You can usually find me at whole foods sniffing the timestamped paper bags of coffee until i settle on something that doesnt smell too burnt or too acidic.