As a former roaster, I appreciate this video to educate the masses. One of my favorites was white coffee, which was super lightly roasted and retained a lot of it's caffeine content as a result, but also came out a greenish brown color and tasted super light and nutty like oat milk or something.
Advice for everyone: The best coffee has a visible roasted date on the packaging. The more recent, the better. I recommend finding and buying freshly roasted coffee from a local coffee roaster. You get great coffee and likely support a local business. (This advice is tailored more for the uninitiated coffee enjoyer)
I agree with @@noob19087. The roaster up the block from me won't even put the beans on the shelf until they've rested for about 5 days. I subscribe to beans from Onyx as well, and I never start brewing with them right away. The roast date on the packaging is usually 3 days before I receive them, so I generally wait another week before making coffee with the new beans.
it's funny how I actually don't like coffee at all, but through /really/ good and fun videos like these I probably know more about it than many of my caffeinated friends
Hitting the comments to plug the Awesome Coffee Club, some of the best coffee I've ever had that just so happens to be incredibly ethically sourced and coincidentally raises money to help build a maternal health and training center in Sierra Leone. Great coffee, greater causes.
5:00 In Brazil, the Brazilian Association of the Coffee Industry (ABIC, from the name in Portuguese) standardizes the reported roast from "very light" to "very dark" based on the Agtron scale.
Very informative video, thank you! As I am from Vienna, I would like to add, that 'Viennese' refers to 'Wiener Mischung' (Viennese mixture). It is a mixture of darker and blonde roasted beans, thus combining both worlds of taste.
Starbucks tastes consistent. To me, it always tastes like ashes. Flavor notes include forest fire, fireplace log, and cigarette smoke, just to be snarky. I have found that Dunkin medium roast is quite fine. I tend to like the lighter flavors, and preparation really matters, because I can taste the bitterness in coffee quite strongly. And I tend to add creamer and sweetness to it.
I just posted something about this before I watched the vid. The long and short is that Starbucks roasts their beans at a higher temp, which is why they trend darker and have that charcoal and ash flavor that only works in their main format of milk and sugar heavy coffee drinks.
i have almost never had a dark roast that didn't taste almost entirely of "burnt", to me - and not just from pots of coffee left on the heater for hours part of it might be taste-sensitivity, but i have never been able to wrap my head around other people tasting things _beyond_ "boiled ashes", because, especially with hot coffee, there never seems to be any other flavour in there!
One other thing to note is that all these roast levels are independent of how strong you choose to brew your coffee (ie how much you use per cup). I think this might also be one of the reasons big chains roast dark, because they can use less of it and still have it taste bitter like coffee; but for me coffee - especially filter coffee - from those establishments tastes kind of empty and watery despite being quite bitter from the dark roast. My favourite coffee is a medium roast brewed strong.
There should be scales that quantify the color and/or the degree of maillard reaction of a particular batch/roast, similar to IBU or EBC in the beer industry, where IBU quantifies the concentration of a particular kind of bitter molecules, and EBC quantifies the darkness of a beer. They're not definitive measures of whether you'll like a particular beer, because they're obviously reductive, but they can give you a good starting point to clue you into what to expect, because the lines between different styles of beer can blur at times, making the labeling a bit confusing if you base yourself on beer style alone.
This is the basis for a lot of the ongoing work/research to improve the standardization of roast levels. Here's a great summary if you're interested: sca.coffee/sca-news/25/issue-21/what-color-is-your-coffee
There is a similar thing in fine tobacco where the type, source origin, and processing style are part of the information provided because of how it affects flavor when smoked. There are a lot of good reasons to shy away from anything the tobacco industry does at any level, but this is one of the few things that may have merit in conceptually stealing from them.
Very helpful. The local roaster I've used for the past 5 years lets you choose how roasted your beans get, so I've sampled beans by ordering all of them at full city roast (basically medium dark end of the scale) and comparing that way. Tip: Any time someone says something tastes "bright" they are referring to sourness. Bright tastes are astringent and act as palate cleansers, cutting through other lingering heavy flavors. Light roasts almost always are sour or bright in taste IME and typically give me hyperacidity much quicker, hence my preference for darker roasts.
You know I genuinely didn't believe that minutefood would be worth anyone's time when it launched But my oh my am I so glad to have been consistently proven wrong I love this so much
You should also talk about impact of fermentation methods and of altitude on the beans! But thanks for making this video. People seem to have a lot of bias about roast levels (like darker = more masculine 😂) when in reality the roaster should be picking the roast to complement the beans and people should buy based on flavors they like
Industry secret: large-scale roasters (such as Starbucks, or Illy, or Nestlé, or others) value *flavor consistency* over good taste. The only way to achieve this consistency is by roasting at very high temperatures, as it minimizes the "origin flavors" and just tastes "burnt." This also allows them to purchase lower-quality coffee in general, as it doesn't really matter what it tastes like if they're going to "over-roast" anyway. This is why typically *any* smaller, locally-roasted coffee will taste better and will actually have different flavors and aromas in different packaging, where "blonde" vs. "dark" roasts from Starbucks taste nearly the same - because they recognize that coffee is a fruit and do the best with the crop any given year, instead of worrying about protecting brand image. Funnily enough, because most people are used to over-roasted coffee from Starbucks' or equivalent, when you give them locally-roasted coffee that isn't over-roasted, they'll complain that it tastes very "sour" to them.
I love drinking coffee and trying different blends (including from independent, local roasters!), but I didn't know any of the details about how roast levels affect flavor! I'm normally someone who does a lot of research (as a scientist), though I've been enjoying coffee without having much of a drive to dig too deep into it. I'm glad for this introduction, so I have a launching off point to become better informed about coffee.
Thanks for the great video! And great point about the roast levels on the bags not being actually tied to any objective standard. There is currently a tool many specialty roasters use to determine roast level, a spectrophotometer. These measure the amount of light the roasted coffee absorbs, and returns a numeric value. There are many handheld devices these days that can measure these values (Lighttells, Roastrite, Difluid, and others), but the downside is they measure relatively small samples and can be inconsistent if the user over or underfills the sample. However, when done correctly, roasters can measure both the whole bean color (the outside of the bean) as well as ground coffee (inside of the bean), which can tell you a lot about the exact roast level of the coffee you are enjoying.
What I do is that here in Mexico there is a local brand of instant coffee called Oro (gold) which has a "24 Karat" edition. That coffee made with a cinnamon infusion is SO GOOD.
As a Hoffman watcher and certified weird coffee person, I think there’s a lot of good information in this. And it points people in the right direction if they want to become a weird coffee person.
I worked as coffee quality control for our med sized coffee company and a few other small roasters who roasted for us. You can think of roasting coffee beans as cooking steak. Sometimes the outside color is correct but once ya grind it up it can be raw inside. Also starbucks makes awful coffee with insane mark up. They use cheap beans and burn their beans for the consistent coffee flavor then flavor em with sugary additives and milk. Good coffee doesnt need any of that stuff and will most often come from small coffee companies. They buy small batches of top grade beans from the best locations, which are usually small farms. Big companies prefer consistency and dont even bother with getting green coffee beans that wont give them but one or 2000 12 oz bags of coffee.
Coffee roasters should take a page from maltsters from beer brewing. A color standard already exists (well a couple but they are convertible). SRM (standard reference method) or degrees Lovibond consistently describes the roast level of malt across brands.
"Origin characteristics" is kind of a useful term, but also kind of meaningless. The first predictor if you'll like the coffee is roast level, like they said. If you prefer coffees in the medium to light spectrum, the second predictor is variety. Coffee has varieties just like apples, grapes, etc. You've probably hear of some of these like typica or gesha. If you've liked bags of coffee with caturra before, you'll probably like others. If a company doesn't list varieties on the bag or their website, it's probably a dark roast.
This is part of why I no longer purchase at the grocery store or big brands (Starbucks, peets) coffee. I only buy local roasters. Just as important as roast level is roast date, and anything at the grocery store is basically expired trash before you even buy it.
This was actually very helpful. I am trying to switch to lighter roasts and have been a bit mystified, and looks like some of that was due to the labeling randomnesses you've explained here.
There are some people who believe that darker roast coffee has more concentrated caffeine. There are people who believe that lighter toasts retain more caffeine. The reality is, the caffeine content stays *mostly* stable through the roasting process, and other factors, such as origin, play a larger role in the level of Get Up And Go in your cup of Joe.
It'd be hard to pick where to start! The different types of tea have different processing steps. Green tea is steamed (Japanese style) or pan toasted (Chinese style) to fix the green color and flavor before it's dried. White tea is withered before drying. Oolong is bruised so it partially oxidizes, usually by rolling or twisting the leaves. Black tea is similar, but fully oxidized. Puerh and other aged teas are actually fermented (but for some reason, the oxidation of black tea is called fermentation? It's not really though, because afaik it's not a microbe party like true fermentation is). If you want an in-depth explainer, Wu Mountain Tea made an excellent series that dives into tea, and one of the videos talks all about the different processing steps that distinguish one kind of tea from another
So cinnamon,, City, City+, full city, full city +, vienna, spanish and french are terms that don't have anything to do with color but roast progression and are really descriptive. During roasting there are two cracks and these terms refer to where the roast finished relative to these two cracks and while they sound cryptic are really descriptive of where in the roast you are rather than color.
It is soooo annoying when roasters do not put the roast level on the bag. Like, we know starbucks is all dark and burnt, but specialty roasters have better sense - and coffee. If the roast level isn't listed, I don't buy it. The darker the roast, the less I like it. In order to get consistently good light and medium roast coffees, I use a subscription service that sends me a different coffee every month from a small batch specialty roaster. That way I get a variety and high quality beans.
I got myself a little 250g roaster at the start of Covid (the postage service was all over the place so it was a pain to not know when you'd get it, and of course you don't want stuff that's been sitting around for a month or so). It's awesome to be able to just roast on demand. Probably once per fortnight I'll do 4-6 small roasts in the garden (weather permitting of course!). It's not as consistent as what you'd get from a professional roaster (fair to assume that trying to get a consistent level across a 250g roast is a bit more unpredictable than a 75kg one! Also I'm not a professional...), but it's damn good. Edit: 5:35 - Little guy on the right has to be James Hoffmann-inspired right?
I thought the difficulty came mostly from Starbucks choosing to have burned beans as their medium roast. Nice tip on the flavor notes. I'll pay more attention to those and see if finding coffee I like becomes more consistent.
Green coffee isn't _exactly_ raw, it's gone through a fair amount of processing by the time it's ready to be roasted, often including being heated in an oven. It's a bit like calling bread 'raw' because it hasn't been toasted. The green state is the point that coffee has the longest shelf life (effectively indefinite), before it gets to that point it can still ferment (which is sometimes done on purpose since it imparts interesting flavours like pineapple and wine) and, once it's roasted, it only stays fresh for a couple months (it's not going to hurt you to drink old coffee, it just gets more and more disgusting).
How do you prepare your coffee? Ever since I've been having espresso based drinks at home with lighter roasts, I've used less milk and had a more enjoyable taste
Great video on Coffee Roasts, Thanks On a side note regarding voting, one big reason that people don't vote is because they feel their vote is irrelevant. One example where this is really true is for US Presidential Election in Blue or Red States. In those states, all the votes for the state go to the party with the largest number of voters so no matter which side you are on one or a hundred, or even a thousand votes don't really matter since the states are winner-take-all, all the votes are going to go for the winner which it would take a HUGE number of votes to change. For example, in Oregon in 2020 though Trump won in 25 of 35 counties, Biden won in the main population centers of Eugene, Salem, and Portland where 70% of Oregonians live so Biden won by almost 400,000 votes.
I vote but I feel like my vote doesn't matter because I only have 2 choices and I don't like either one. At least now, both our choices are not 80+ YOs. Really???? We only have 2 political parties, they're both corrupt, most all politicians on both sides are ancient, and neither side even tries to make things better. I want a larger candidate pool of younger diverse people who are not career politicians. I could replace all our politicians with random people and we'd have a much better government.
@@loriki8766 I agree, at one time, I feel the two party system allowed for balance (kind of a Yin-Yang thing) but, now it creates division. I feel that both sides have found that they get more votes from separation than they get from unity and that anger and fear are great motivators so they amp those to the max. This is further amplified by the primaries. Your comment on having common people rather than career politicians is also interesting since that is how things were when our country was formed. In the 1700s civil servants were not paid. The seats were filled by people with jobs and they served out of civil duty.
Nice video. Just to clarify, the green coffee beans contain very little chlorophyll, it's actually chlorogenic acid that gives them their green hue. It gets broken down during roasting.
darker roasted coffee usually is done with an inferior coffee bean, to mask the terribleness of the bean. I just don't buy dark roast because of the bad quality
I'd say it's still 50:50 cuz some region like Mt Kerinci of Jambi and Gayo of Aceh, tends to have higher acidity. Still gotta check for the taste notes.
Not mocking or judging anyone that drinks and enjoys starbuck just pointing out why some people don't like there coffee. There beans are at the FAR right, very dark and oily which often to some like myself it taste burnt and "flavorless" no sweetness or any chocolatey notes or nuttiness just burnt. And nothing wrong with that, if you like your burger charred versus the rare side. Just no when some say they don't like it, its not an attack on starbucks culture or life style just preference.
It's just one of a hundred things to hate about the company but I really hate that Starbucks light roasts are dark roasts and everything else is flavourless charcoal. Local roasters are usually better by default, no matter what beans they use, because they don't burn them.
As an italian, I was pretty confused about all the different flavours mentioned as what a coffe could taste like, then I remembered outside Italy "coffee" usually takes the form of dark soup
The most irritating thing about coffee packaging isn't that they sometimes don't include a roast level, but that they usually don't include ANY information about the coffee. When I'm shopping, I would like to know what kind of coffee it is, where it was harvested, when it was harvested and roasted, how long it was roasted, ect. But instead, they include words like "nutty", "fruity", "chocolate", avocado", or phrases like "excellent quality", "hand picked", "generations of experience", "ethically sustained", and "with consent of the native poison dart frog population"... That's mostly useless, but thanks, I guess...?
Another lovley tight video😊 Ethan chlebowski did a long indepth video on coffee thats worth a look if you like this video but want a bit more info. He also has some good tips on finding coffees you might like. Not a sponsor.
I wish they would be consistent with the color determination because roasts that are too light upset my stomach. I thought i would have to give up coffee before i figured that out.
nice video, and I like your take on looking at the flavor notes to indicate roast level. But really aren't we just asking where on the spectrum of acidic, neutral/smooth, or roasty/bitter the coffee will taste like? However you are incorrect that the Maillard reaction will last as long as it does during the roast. Another confusing topic to wave a stick at, just like roast level. Something I like to do (might be weird to see in public), but i like to squeeze the bag a little and smell the coffee bag at the vent, and that gives me a general idea when I smell the roasted coffee aroma.
I have a crazy idea: You remember that movie "Reign of Fire" where the dragon turns the tomatoes to ash? Well, if a dragon in "Dungeons & Dragons" sleeps on gold because that's what works for soft bedding, maybe a dragon also prefers the flavor of a maillard reaction in all their food, hence they breath fire as an essential dietary skill? So, only real dragons drink dark roast on gold?
would it make sense to mix roast types to get all the flavors from the entire spectrum? Would that be any good? I never see it done but is that just a matter of convenience/consistency (every bean a consistent roast) or is it a matter of being a terrible idea?
Why are coffee regions so often described by altitude, rather than *elevation.* It seems to be the only food I regularly hear using that term, but I'm pretty sure it isn't just some translation issue, but an industry choice.
Interestingly grapes, tea, and coco beans also use altitude as a common descriptor alongside or even in preference to elevation. I would guess these are related but I do not know
Hopefully I can help with some questions! Altitude does very weird things to plants. Typically, altitude affects how fruit ripens. Temperature, humidity, and other stuffs change how much sugar and acids are in a coffee cherry. The fruit essentially flavors the beans (beans are seeds)! Higher altitude accentuates florality and fruity qualities. Genes also play a role but thats the spark notes
@@TheNamesNoble thanks for the reply, that is interesting...but my question is really about the linguistics of elevation versus altitude. Where I am from, elevation is defined as distance above sea level (such as a mountain peak being 5,000 meters elevation), while altitude is a distance above the terrain (such as a plane flying at 10,000 meters altitude). Perhaps in certain languages only one word is used for both, but where I am from, they are not synonymous. I can figure out from context what is meant, I am just curious as to why coffee (and apparently grapes, tea, and cocoa) use this linguistic oddity.
hi, thanks for all the videos on coffee, but this makes me wonder, since you both like coffee and supporting causes for democracy, have you ever tried / do you know about zapatista coffee and if you have what do you think about it ?
Thats also aply for tea Green tea has a more grassy flavor Meanwhile Red tea has a more roasty flavor And making Red tea from green is a pretty similar proccess #TeamTea
Keep in mind oxidation is different from roasting. Oxidation is what changes green tea to red, and both can be roasted, giving red tea toasty flavors and green tea buttery vegetable flavors
@@RegrinderAlert So as a former process engineer and food chemist, if I wanted to experiment I would brew each separately then combine the coffee in proportions until I got perhaps a nice blend. I don’t care for light roasted beans, I’m more in the Starbucks Sumatra area…
ok tho, can u make a video on where on earth origin characteristics come from. Like i literally have no idea what altitude has to do with how bean juice tastes
I've heard that people prefer "black" coffee, because that's "stronger", but very dark roast tastes like charcoal and nobody would buy it. So when a package says 6 or 7, it is actually out of 12 not 10, which makes it much closer to a medium-high.
I love the subtle James Hoffman cameo
I noticed and love same point!
Wait, where?!
@@Basomic5:25 "the rise of specialty coffee"
Came here to say xD
@@Basomic at 5:24
As a former roaster, I appreciate this video to educate the masses. One of my favorites was white coffee, which was super lightly roasted and retained a lot of it's caffeine content as a result, but also came out a greenish brown color and tasted super light and nutty like oat milk or something.
My kind of coffee.
Shout out to the James Hoffman doodle.
I SAW IT TOO! the hairstyle and glasses are super distinctive!
@@TizonaAmanthiawhereeee
Nvm, found it on 5:26
0:45 Top tier reflection effects. I see you.
Advice for everyone: The best coffee has a visible roasted date on the packaging. The more recent, the better.
I recommend finding and buying freshly roasted coffee from a local coffee roaster. You get great coffee and likely support a local business.
(This advice is tailored more for the uninitiated coffee enjoyer)
Most coffees are at their best around 1-2 weeks after roasting. So really, really fresh coffee can actually be disappointing.
I live on a farm. There's no such thing as a 'local coffee roaster' 🙄
@@cassieoz1702 You can order coffee online and have it delivered.
I agree with @@noob19087. The roaster up the block from me won't even put the beans on the shelf until they've rested for about 5 days. I subscribe to beans from Onyx as well, and I never start brewing with them right away. The roast date on the packaging is usually 3 days before I receive them, so I generally wait another week before making coffee with the new beans.
@@cassieoz1702 If available. You're the exception, not the rule.
it's funny how I actually don't like coffee at all, but through /really/ good and fun videos like these I probably know more about it than many of my caffeinated friends
LOL, same here! I very rarely drink coffee because it's usually too hot and too bitter and the caffeine has literally zero effect on me whatsoever.
caffeinated friends
@@MatthewTheWandererSome people will be jealous of you since they want more coffee in their life without experiencing the jitters.
Hitting the comments to plug the Awesome Coffee Club, some of the best coffee I've ever had that just so happens to be incredibly ethically sourced and coincidentally raises money to help build a maternal health and training center in Sierra Leone. Great coffee, greater causes.
Yes. This.
5:00 In Brazil, the Brazilian Association of the Coffee Industry (ABIC, from the name in Portuguese) standardizes the reported roast from "very light" to "very dark" based on the Agtron scale.
A bic é uma caneta boa e barata, mas acho que você tá exagerando
Very informative video, thank you! As I am from Vienna, I would like to add, that 'Viennese' refers to 'Wiener Mischung' (Viennese mixture). It is a mixture of darker and blonde roasted beans, thus combining both worlds of taste.
It's bean a nice video. A light watch, full of flavour.
How did you comment a day ago?
How did you comment a day before the upload?
If you join the channel you can watch videos earlier
@@felipevera6075 ohhh, cool
@@felipevera6075Nope. Patreon in my case.
Starbucks tastes consistent. To me, it always tastes like ashes. Flavor notes include forest fire, fireplace log, and cigarette smoke, just to be snarky. I have found that Dunkin medium roast is quite fine. I tend to like the lighter flavors, and preparation really matters, because I can taste the bitterness in coffee quite strongly. And I tend to add creamer and sweetness to it.
Same same. I hate it when my coffee tastes like "fireplace log". My favorite profiles are more like "brown butter".
I just posted something about this before I watched the vid. The long and short is that Starbucks roasts their beans at a higher temp, which is why they trend darker and have that charcoal and ash flavor that only works in their main format of milk and sugar heavy coffee drinks.
Please boycott Starbucks they support the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza
How do you feel about their blonde roast?
I've never had Starbucks in my life and now you convinced me to keep it that way. I prefer my coffee a bit bitter, and definitely not like candy.
i have almost never had a dark roast that didn't taste almost entirely of "burnt", to me - and not just from pots of coffee left on the heater for hours
part of it might be taste-sensitivity, but i have never been able to wrap my head around other people tasting things _beyond_ "boiled ashes", because, especially with hot coffee, there never seems to be any other flavour in there!
normal starbucks roast is charcoal so it's not surprising that they think a "light roast" is actually a very dark roast.
One other thing to note is that all these roast levels are independent of how strong you choose to brew your coffee (ie how much you use per cup). I think this might also be one of the reasons big chains roast dark, because they can use less of it and still have it taste bitter like coffee; but for me coffee - especially filter coffee - from those establishments tastes kind of empty and watery despite being quite bitter from the dark roast. My favourite coffee is a medium roast brewed strong.
There should be scales that quantify the color and/or the degree of maillard reaction of a particular batch/roast, similar to IBU or EBC in the beer industry, where IBU quantifies the concentration of a particular kind of bitter molecules, and EBC quantifies the darkness of a beer. They're not definitive measures of whether you'll like a particular beer, because they're obviously reductive, but they can give you a good starting point to clue you into what to expect, because the lines between different styles of beer can blur at times, making the labeling a bit confusing if you base yourself on beer style alone.
This is the basis for a lot of the ongoing work/research to improve the standardization of roast levels. Here's a great summary if you're interested: sca.coffee/sca-news/25/issue-21/what-color-is-your-coffee
There is a similar thing in fine tobacco where the type, source origin, and processing style are part of the information provided because of how it affects flavor when smoked. There are a lot of good reasons to shy away from anything the tobacco industry does at any level, but this is one of the few things that may have merit in conceptually stealing from them.
Another important factor for creating a standard would be “how easy is it to evaluate without buying expensive specialized equipment?”
Very helpful. The local roaster I've used for the past 5 years lets you choose how roasted your beans get, so I've sampled beans by ordering all of them at full city roast (basically medium dark end of the scale) and comparing that way.
Tip: Any time someone says something tastes "bright" they are referring to sourness. Bright tastes are astringent and act as palate cleansers, cutting through other lingering heavy flavors. Light roasts almost always are sour or bright in taste IME and typically give me hyperacidity much quicker, hence my preference for darker roasts.
It's a good day when MinuteFood uploads
You know I genuinely didn't believe that minutefood would be worth anyone's time when it launched
But my oh my am I so glad to have been consistently proven wrong
I love this so much
You should also talk about impact of fermentation methods and of altitude on the beans!
But thanks for making this video. People seem to have a lot of bias about roast levels (like darker = more masculine 😂) when in reality the roaster should be picking the roast to complement the beans and people should buy based on flavors they like
Also people assume darker roast have more caffeine, but actually lighter roasts have more caffeine!
Industry secret: large-scale roasters (such as Starbucks, or Illy, or Nestlé, or others) value *flavor consistency* over good taste. The only way to achieve this consistency is by roasting at very high temperatures, as it minimizes the "origin flavors" and just tastes "burnt." This also allows them to purchase lower-quality coffee in general, as it doesn't really matter what it tastes like if they're going to "over-roast" anyway. This is why typically *any* smaller, locally-roasted coffee will taste better and will actually have different flavors and aromas in different packaging, where "blonde" vs. "dark" roasts from Starbucks taste nearly the same - because they recognize that coffee is a fruit and do the best with the crop any given year, instead of worrying about protecting brand image.
Funnily enough, because most people are used to over-roasted coffee from Starbucks' or equivalent, when you give them locally-roasted coffee that isn't over-roasted, they'll complain that it tastes very "sour" to them.
I love drinking coffee and trying different blends (including from independent, local roasters!), but I didn't know any of the details about how roast levels affect flavor! I'm normally someone who does a lot of research (as a scientist), though I've been enjoying coffee without having much of a drive to dig too deep into it. I'm glad for this introduction, so I have a launching off point to become better informed about coffee.
Thanks for the great video! And great point about the roast levels on the bags not being actually tied to any objective standard. There is currently a tool many specialty roasters use to determine roast level, a spectrophotometer. These measure the amount of light the roasted coffee absorbs, and returns a numeric value. There are many handheld devices these days that can measure these values (Lighttells, Roastrite, Difluid, and others), but the downside is they measure relatively small samples and can be inconsistent if the user over or underfills the sample. However, when done correctly, roasters can measure both the whole bean color (the outside of the bean) as well as ground coffee (inside of the bean), which can tell you a lot about the exact roast level of the coffee you are enjoying.
The fact that Starbucks “blonde” roast is so dark suggest to me that they wouldn’t really be on board with the idea of standardizing the roast levels.
“Ah yes, we at Starbucks are proud of our wide spread of offerings: dark, dark, and if you’re feeling adventurous, dark”
They have very nasty burnt-tasting coffee but everyone adds so much extra crap to it, it is hard to notice.
As an expert in coffee roasting and the specialty coffee industry, I already thoroughly understand this topic, but here I am watching anyway.
Personally the most important factor in my coffee is how easy it is to pump directly into my veins
You can buy caffeine supplements
@@georgebarc those are a bit harder to load into a syringe
Ie. you don’t want to taste it?
The only thing you need to know is 'french roast', 'city roast' or 'italian roast' means "whoops, we burnt it".
What I do is that here in Mexico there is a local brand of instant coffee called Oro (gold) which has a "24 Karat" edition. That coffee made with a cinnamon infusion is SO GOOD.
6:54 Is that mug in Ithkuil?
I wonder what James Hoffman will have to say about this video
I wanna see his reaction when his cartoon version appears.
As a Hoffman watcher and certified weird coffee person, I think there’s a lot of good information in this. And it points people in the right direction if they want to become a weird coffee person.
I worked as coffee quality control for our med sized coffee company and a few other small roasters who roasted for us. You can think of roasting coffee beans as cooking steak. Sometimes the outside color is correct but once ya grind it up it can be raw inside. Also starbucks makes awful coffee with insane mark up. They use cheap beans and burn their beans for the consistent coffee flavor then flavor em with sugary additives and milk. Good coffee doesnt need any of that stuff and will most often come from small coffee companies. They buy small batches of top grade beans from the best locations, which are usually small farms. Big companies prefer consistency and dont even bother with getting green coffee beans that wont give them but one or 2000 12 oz bags of coffee.
The groundwork coffee that you showed to demo the tasting notes is actually a really good bag.
Coffee roasters should take a page from maltsters from beer brewing. A color standard already exists (well a couple but they are convertible). SRM (standard reference method) or degrees Lovibond consistently describes the roast level of malt across brands.
Well it exists, is commonly used and called the Agtron scale.
James Hoffmann collaboration when?
We're DEFINITELY game!
@@MinuteFood Cool! Loving the videos by the way :)
Smol Hoffmann 5:24
@@gwyn. *leornado dicaprio pointing meme*
I would prefer to see a Hames Joffman collab.
Finute Mood.
"Origin characteristics" is kind of a useful term, but also kind of meaningless. The first predictor if you'll like the coffee is roast level, like they said. If you prefer coffees in the medium to light spectrum, the second predictor is variety. Coffee has varieties just like apples, grapes, etc. You've probably hear of some of these like typica or gesha. If you've liked bags of coffee with caturra before, you'll probably like others. If a company doesn't list varieties on the bag or their website, it's probably a dark roast.
This is part of why I no longer purchase at the grocery store or big brands (Starbucks, peets) coffee. I only buy local roasters. Just as important as roast level is roast date, and anything at the grocery store is basically expired trash before you even buy it.
This was actually very helpful. I am trying to switch to lighter roasts and have been a bit mystified, and looks like some of that was due to the labeling randomnesses you've explained here.
6:53 is that an Ithkuil coffee mug? 🧐
There are some people who believe that darker roast coffee has more concentrated caffeine. There are people who believe that lighter toasts retain more caffeine.
The reality is, the caffeine content stays *mostly* stable through the roasting process, and other factors, such as origin, play a larger role in the level of Get Up And Go in your cup of Joe.
We need a tea video like this!
Or several. Roasting is but one dimension of where its flavor comes from, if it's even roasted at all
It'd be hard to pick where to start! The different types of tea have different processing steps. Green tea is steamed (Japanese style) or pan toasted (Chinese style) to fix the green color and flavor before it's dried. White tea is withered before drying. Oolong is bruised so it partially oxidizes, usually by rolling or twisting the leaves. Black tea is similar, but fully oxidized. Puerh and other aged teas are actually fermented (but for some reason, the oxidation of black tea is called fermentation? It's not really though, because afaik it's not a microbe party like true fermentation is). If you want an in-depth explainer, Wu Mountain Tea made an excellent series that dives into tea, and one of the videos talks all about the different processing steps that distinguish one kind of tea from another
@@harmonicaveronica
The difference between an Assam, Kemun, Darjeeling, and the like alone are staggering.
upvoting for awarness
So cinnamon,, City, City+, full city, full city +, vienna, spanish and french are terms that don't have anything to do with color but roast progression and are really descriptive. During roasting there are two cracks and these terms refer to where the roast finished relative to these two cracks and while they sound cryptic are really descriptive of where in the roast you are rather than color.
It is soooo annoying when roasters do not put the roast level on the bag. Like, we know starbucks is all dark and burnt, but specialty roasters have better sense - and coffee. If the roast level isn't listed, I don't buy it. The darker the roast, the less I like it.
In order to get consistently good light and medium roast coffees, I use a subscription service that sends me a different coffee every month from a small batch specialty roaster. That way I get a variety and high quality beans.
I got myself a little 250g roaster at the start of Covid (the postage service was all over the place so it was a pain to not know when you'd get it, and of course you don't want stuff that's been sitting around for a month or so).
It's awesome to be able to just roast on demand. Probably once per fortnight I'll do 4-6 small roasts in the garden (weather permitting of course!). It's not as consistent as what you'd get from a professional roaster (fair to assume that trying to get a consistent level across a 250g roast is a bit more unpredictable than a 75kg one! Also I'm not a professional...), but it's damn good.
Edit: 5:35 - Little guy on the right has to be James Hoffmann-inspired right?
I thought the difficulty came mostly from Starbucks choosing to have burned beans as their medium roast. Nice tip on the flavor notes. I'll pay more attention to those and see if finding coffee I like becomes more consistent.
Green coffee isn't _exactly_ raw, it's gone through a fair amount of processing by the time it's ready to be roasted, often including being heated in an oven. It's a bit like calling bread 'raw' because it hasn't been toasted. The green state is the point that coffee has the longest shelf life (effectively indefinite), before it gets to that point it can still ferment (which is sometimes done on purpose since it imparts interesting flavours like pineapple and wine) and, once it's roasted, it only stays fresh for a couple months (it's not going to hurt you to drink old coffee, it just gets more and more disgusting).
I would love to see a video focused on Microwave vs Oven vs Airfryer
This was fascinating! Thank you!
I prefer the toasted maillard flavors. Most coffee chains in North America brew way too weak so the lighter roasts taste like water to me.
How do you prepare your coffee? Ever since I've been having espresso based drinks at home with lighter roasts, I've used less milk and had a more enjoyable taste
Is that an ithkuil mug?
Great video on Coffee Roasts, Thanks
On a side note regarding voting, one big reason that people don't vote is because they feel their vote is irrelevant.
One example where this is really true is for US Presidential Election in Blue or Red States.
In those states, all the votes for the state go to the party with the largest number of voters so no matter which side you are on one or a hundred, or even a thousand votes don't really matter since the states are winner-take-all, all the votes are going to go for the winner which it would take a HUGE number of votes to change. For example, in Oregon in 2020 though Trump won in 25 of 35 counties, Biden won in the main population centers of Eugene, Salem, and Portland where 70% of Oregonians live so Biden won by almost 400,000 votes.
I vote but I feel like my vote doesn't matter because I only have 2 choices and I don't like either one. At least now, both our choices are not 80+ YOs. Really???? We only have 2 political parties, they're both corrupt, most all politicians on both sides are ancient, and neither side even tries to make things better. I want a larger candidate pool of younger diverse people who are not career politicians. I could replace all our politicians with random people and we'd have a much better government.
@@loriki8766 I agree, at one time, I feel the two party system allowed for balance (kind of a Yin-Yang thing) but, now it creates division. I feel that both sides have found that they get more votes from separation than they get from unity and that anger and fear are great motivators so they amp those to the max. This is further amplified by the primaries. Your comment on having common people rather than career politicians is also interesting since that is how things were when our country was formed. In the 1700s civil servants were not paid. The seats were filled by people with jobs and they served out of civil duty.
Would love to see a Honey coffee process! It changes the flavor way before the roast and feels like something fit with this channel :-)
Nice video. Just to clarify, the green coffee beans contain very little chlorophyll, it's actually chlorogenic acid that gives them their green hue. It gets broken down during roasting.
I’m not sure if it’s at all standardized, but here in Finland at least big mainstream brands indicate a roast level with numbers from 1 through 5.
darker roasted coffee usually is done with an inferior coffee bean, to mask the terribleness of the bean. I just don't buy dark roast because of the bad quality
I just know I like Sumatran beans. I always drink my coffee black, so I want as little sourness as possible.
I'd say it's still 50:50 cuz some region like Mt Kerinci of Jambi and Gayo of Aceh, tends to have higher acidity. Still gotta check for the taste notes.
@@mahfudzkWhy don't you do that and report back if you have time?
Not mocking or judging anyone that drinks and enjoys starbuck just pointing out why some people don't like there coffee. There beans are at the FAR right, very dark and oily which often to some like myself it taste burnt and "flavorless" no sweetness or any chocolatey notes or nuttiness just burnt. And nothing wrong with that, if you like your burger charred versus the rare side. Just no when some say they don't like it, its not an attack on starbucks culture or life style just preference.
I don't even like coffee but I want to watch this.
Three are the things for what it's worth living: one is music, the other is coffee.
Yay new upload 🎉
Okay okay, I'll vote. Medium roast 2024!
You should make a video about how the cartridges for Cirkul water bottles work
Is it true that roast affects caffeine levels? I've heard that lighter roasts are more caffeinated, while darker roasts are less.
It's just one of a hundred things to hate about the company but I really hate that Starbucks light roasts are dark roasts and everything else is flavourless charcoal. Local roasters are usually better by default, no matter what beans they use, because they don't burn them.
Nice short and informative
As an italian, I was pretty confused about all the different flavours mentioned as what a coffe could taste like, then I remembered outside Italy "coffee" usually takes the form of dark soup
Quite intrigued you didn't mention first crack and second crack during roasting. I was under the impression that they were significant
The most irritating thing about coffee packaging isn't that they sometimes don't include a roast level, but that they usually don't include ANY information about the coffee.
When I'm shopping, I would like to know what kind of coffee it is, where it was harvested, when it was harvested and roasted, how long it was roasted, ect.
But instead, they include words like "nutty", "fruity", "chocolate", avocado", or phrases like "excellent quality", "hand picked", "generations of experience", "ethically sustained", and "with consent of the native poison dart frog population"...
That's mostly useless, but thanks, I guess...?
The mallard reaction is honestly pretty quackers. I tried it once and it's really not ducking around.
Another lovley tight video😊
Ethan chlebowski did a long indepth video on coffee thats worth a look if you like this video but want a bit more info. He also has some good tips on finding coffees you might like. Not a sponsor.
I hope you will do a video about the three(ish) different demanding processes, and how they affect coffee flavors 🤔 please.
I wish they would be consistent with the color determination because roasts that are too light upset my stomach. I thought i would have to give up coffee before i figured that out.
What if you blend two or more different roasts together? I don't care for coffee myself, but I think it would be interesting.
I really like lighter roasts, but it's hard to get good ones at coffee places in the US
I usually go for ethiopia light roasts when I get the choice
How on earth is "Jam" and "Juice" to be interpreted as "middle of the road"?
Saw some pretty neat sensors on the roasters. Would love to see what thats about!
I pressed on the video right when it was changing title
nice video, and I like your take on looking at the flavor notes to indicate roast level. But really aren't we just asking where on the spectrum of acidic, neutral/smooth, or roasty/bitter the coffee will taste like? However you are incorrect that the Maillard reaction will last as long as it does during the roast. Another confusing topic to wave a stick at, just like roast level.
Something I like to do (might be weird to see in public), but i like to squeeze the bag a little and smell the coffee bag at the vent, and that gives me a general idea when I smell the roasted coffee aroma.
6:54 is that ithkuil on the mug???
Was that an ithquil mug?
I don't even drink coffee and found this video fascinating.
I have a crazy idea:
You remember that movie "Reign of Fire" where the dragon turns the tomatoes to ash?
Well, if a dragon in "Dungeons & Dragons" sleeps on gold because that's what works for soft bedding, maybe a dragon also prefers the flavor of a maillard reaction in all their food, hence they breath fire as an essential dietary skill?
So, only real dragons drink dark roast on gold?
would it make sense to mix roast types to get all the flavors from the entire spectrum? Would that be any good? I never see it done but is that just a matter of convenience/consistency (every bean a consistent roast) or is it a matter of being a terrible idea?
Watching while drinking my coffee :D
A toast to roasts :)
I had a light roast coffee once.
never again.
6:30
haha. i cant beleive i recognized james hoffman so immediately. cool :3
Did you make up the names at 6:15 or are they real?
Why are coffee regions so often described by altitude, rather than *elevation.* It seems to be the only food I regularly hear using that term, but I'm pretty sure it isn't just some translation issue, but an industry choice.
This is a really interesting question that I don't know the answer to (but I hope someone does!)
Interestingly grapes, tea, and coco beans also use altitude as a common descriptor alongside or even in preference to elevation. I would guess these are related but I do not know
Hopefully I can help with some questions! Altitude does very weird things to plants. Typically, altitude affects how fruit ripens. Temperature, humidity, and other stuffs change how much sugar and acids are in a coffee cherry. The fruit essentially flavors the beans (beans are seeds)! Higher altitude accentuates florality and fruity qualities. Genes also play a role but thats the spark notes
@@TheNamesNoble thanks for the reply, that is interesting...but my question is really about the linguistics of elevation versus altitude. Where I am from, elevation is defined as distance above sea level (such as a mountain peak being 5,000 meters elevation), while altitude is a distance above the terrain (such as a plane flying at 10,000 meters altitude). Perhaps in certain languages only one word is used for both, but where I am from, they are not synonymous. I can figure out from context what is meant, I am just curious as to why coffee (and apparently grapes, tea, and cocoa) use this linguistic oddity.
@@Scrizati thanks, I didn't know about those using the same convention.
hi, thanks for all the videos on coffee, but this makes me wonder, since you both like coffee and supporting causes for democracy, have you ever tried / do you know about zapatista coffee and if you have what do you think about it ?
Ha! A video about coffee would not be complete without a nod to James Hoffmann!
7:48 "was shangela robbed" something perhaps even more confusing than the beans lol
Thats also aply for tea
Green tea has a more grassy flavor Meanwhile Red tea has a more roasty flavor
And making Red tea from green is a pretty similar proccess
#TeamTea
Keep in mind oxidation is different from roasting. Oxidation is what changes green tea to red, and both can be roasted, giving red tea toasty flavors and green tea buttery vegetable flavors
oh my god, an Ithkuil word? in my minute food video? I guess it was more likely than I thought!
6:54
I demand the 'filling up the Grand Canyon with Jello' video!
Okay. Explain the bubbles. Are they Saponins?
I'd definitely consider a bean as dark roasted if it can be crumbled between the fingers.
So, when Rodney Dangerfield was roasted at his 75th birthday, was that a light roast, or a dark roast?
So maybe blend the early roast with heavier roast to get the best flavors of both?
No because they extract very differently meaning you end up with a bad tasting cup.
@@RegrinderAlert So as a former process engineer and food chemist, if I wanted to experiment I would brew each separately then combine the coffee in proportions until I got perhaps a nice blend. I don’t care for light roasted beans, I’m more in the Starbucks Sumatra area…
Love my dark roasts!
ok tho, can u make a video on where on earth origin characteristics come from. Like i literally have no idea what altitude has to do with how bean juice tastes
I've heard that people prefer "black" coffee, because that's "stronger", but very dark roast tastes like charcoal and nobody would buy it.
So when a package says 6 or 7, it is actually out of 12 not 10, which makes it much closer to a medium-high.