| What is the Terroir “Full Flavor Roast?” How does it compare to other roast styles? |
| Roasting coffee is much like cooking meats and vegetables. We try to cook vegetables just enough to allow them to fully release all their flavors but we still want them to retain their sprightly snap. The same goes for beef: it can be cooked rare, medium-rare, medium, and well-done. Full flavor is to coffee what medium-rare is to beef. Only high quality should be cooked this lightly. When this is so, all the flavors of the food/drink are in balance and at a peak. We roast coffee trying to achieve a balance of very complex factors: we want a harmonized articulation of unique, rare volatile aromatics (the first thing to go up in smoke when roasting!), caramelized roast flavors (which easily transform into bitter carbons), enlivening acidity (very similar to wines!) and appropriate rounded body. Because we buy the rarest, most aromatic coffees and wish to give full expression to their distinguishing aromatics, we roast lightly, unless otherwise specified. The Terroir™ roast style requires the ripest -, therefore the most naturally sweet - coffees. Most specialty coffees are roasted the equivalent of well-done or beyond! These roasters emphasize the richness of their coffee, but this comes with the price of a certain sameness and blandness. The popularity of port wines in the 19th century is reminiscent of this trend– rich and, in that case, very sweet – as opposed to the apparently thinner, lighter, more astringent reds we so value today. Dark roasting tends to dramatically blunt a coffee’s acidity and diminish its aromatics, much of which is burned off in smoke at earlier stages of roasting. Dark roasting, in my opinion, covers what delicate flavors, nuances and floral aromas may exist with earthier, coarser, (often referred to as “stronger”) tastes and textures. Such roasts, in my aesthetics, still have a place – with certain desserts, for instance… |
