Are you a budding coffee lover looking to learn more about this wonderful, aromatic world? Would you like to elevate your palette so you can enjoy the finer things in coffee? If you haven’t yet tried roasted coffee, here should be a good place to start.
What is Roasted Coffee?
Pretty much, the name says it all. Roasted coffee is coffee that is produced by heating the coffee cherry seeds to draw out its aroma and flavors. The heated process changes the structure of the bean from a hard, rigid shell to a softer one one, which makes it easier to grind and release its flavors. This is also how the beans develop that quintessential crack down the middle, which adds not only flavor but also character to the bean.
Take it out of the heating process too early and the coffee beans become under-roasted. Leave it for too long, and it will be over-roasted. A good quality coffee roast, therefore, is one that’s been processed just at the right time.
Types of Coffee Roasts
There are four common types of coffee roasts: light, medium, medium-dark, and dark. Determining coffee’s roast type depends on how long they’ve been processed. Light roasts, for example, are roasted in the shortest amount of time, and so have the least intense flavor and have the lowest acidity.
Choosing which one to get is actually going to depend on your preference. For some people, a dark roast could even seem like a medium roast. Therefore the best way to find which suits your tastes best is to, well, taste them.
A good way to start would be to taste one roast done in several different ways. This should be a good way for you to get familiar not only with the roast’s flavor profile, but also how much it appeases your caffeine fix.
Single Origin or Coffee Blend
Another thing you might want to look into when diving deeper into coffee culture is the difference between a single origin or coffee blend.
Basically, single origin coffee simply pertains to coffee that is sourced from one crop, region, or producer. This makes the coffee product pure in its form, so to speak. The more you can trace back the origins of the coffee, the more it means that it is, in fact, single origin. This is also why it is largely deemed by many to be the better kind of coffee.
A coffee blend, on the other hand, simply means that the beans used in the coffee were sourced from multiple locations. For others, the blend makes the coffee’s flavor profile a tad more interesting because of the many layers of flavor released by the various beans.
Take it hot or cold, whatever roast it may be, coffee is the pick-me-upper you can rely on to power through the day.