Light roast is not the roast standard for fine coffee

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Coffee lovers who have just started roasting are always asking a question: do the raw beans of fine coffee necessarily need to be roasted? And cited by the United States, Europe, Australia, many well-known brands of coffee are lightly roasted, thus draw the above conclusion.

From a historical point of view, shallow baking is not new today, or the first boutique coffee. Before the 1960s, coffee in the United States was mostly light-roasted, and the main reason was not to show the flavor of coffee of origin under the condition of light roasting, but for only one purpose: to reduce the rate of water loss and save money. When the concept of boutique coffee was put forward in the late 1960s, American boutique coffee made its debut in the form of deep roasting.

As for northern Europe, light roasting is the baking mode they have always been used to, and people there like to drink light coffee. When Scandinavians drink light baking, Americans are also light baking, but the difference between the two is: Nordic people have a high level of welfare, live a rich life, and choose high-quality and high-priced raw beans, while American shallow baking is to reduce costs, which are different from the same workers.

Light roasting can show the flavor of coffee of origin to a greater extent, because the baking flavor produced by Maillard reaction is less. For example, when we do cup tests, we mostly use shallow baking, in order to let each taster's taste buds clearly taste the flavor of coffee, while avoiding the effect of roasting on the flavor as little as possible.

But the key problem is that many raw coffee beans are not suitable for light roasting, especially those Arabica and Robusta hybrids. For example, the Kenyan Ruiru11, if the baking is very shallow and the caramelization effect is very low, then the pungent acidity of the teeth must not be the flavor of fine coffee.

There are some Arabica varieties crossed with Robusta, shallow roasting will make the senses of coffee very dirty, if the development rate is not enough, then the spicy acidity will appear at the same time. From this, we can understand that most of the coffee raw beans suitable for shallow baking are high-quality coffee beans with flower and fruit flavors.

As to whether the acidity brought about by shallow roasting is a sign of fine coffee, it is a matter of opinion. Acidity, can be regarded as a neutral sense, there can be a difference between acidity, but acidity has a positive and negative distinction, acidity is not a positive taste, if mixed with astringency and granulation or grass almonds and other slightly cool bitter flavor, then this coffee is not enough boutique line, but whether it is enough to pass the line.

Whether shallow roasting is used in coffee roasting depends not only on the physical and chemical state of roasted raw beans, but also on the needs of your audience.