By watching coffee commercials one would definitely get confused as to which one to choose as best the coffee roast. As taste differs with person, one should opt the right roast that suits his/her taste. If a perfect roast is required, then it is essential to understand about the difference between the roasts.



The origin of coffee is green bean. Roasting temperature, duration and darkness differ for each bean variety. Roasters spend a lot of time in roasting and tasting of coffees to find the perfect flavor for each origin. Usually they are differentiated by dark, medium and light roasts.

The color of beans used to get a light roast will resemble milk chocolate. This will have an elegant brightness along with a bit of citrus. Hence this is also referred to as acidity in coffee. The light roast simply means that the beans are roasted in a lesser temperature. To define this roast terms like light, cinnamon, and New England are used. The lighter roast is in fact an indication the confidence the roaster is showing in the quality of the raw bean. In fact, this roast contains 10% more caffeine than the dark roast.

But the fact is that the dark roast is more popular than the light roast. There are particular reasons to go with the statement. Dark roast means that the coffee beans roasted to a higher temperature and for a longer period of time. This results in holding all the good and the bad flavors with in the beans. From these beans the end user cannot decide the quality of the bean. These dark roasts usually are described as European, French, Italian, Espresso, Full City or Viennese. These things describe only the degree of roast but not the origin. In this level, the coffee beans appear as black in color with an oily or shiny finishing. Usually flavors will be smoky and deep. But there will be still some caramel notes, due to the caramelization of sugars in the bean. These will have more bittersweet flavor in them. Sumatra, Mocha Java and Sulawesi are some of the origins of dark roasting. This never means a dark roasted coffee is always a poor coffee. Also we can't assume that the dark roast is as "rich and flavorful" as many roasters say it is. So, it is not without a reason why beans are roasted