Have you ever embarked on a coffee journey that was meant to be a simple exploration but ended up becoming a profound self-discovery process? That's exactly what happened with my "Clarity" project—an ongoing experiment to understand not just coffee, but my relationship with it.
When was the last time you picked up a bag of coffee labeled "light roast" and wondered if it actually matched your understanding of what light roast should be? If you've ever found yourself confused by roast levels or disappointed that a coffee didn't match the description on the bag, you're not alone.
Recently, I completed an extended experiment with light roasts. I was trying to develop a deeper appreciation for something that, frankly, I hadn't always enjoyed. Like many coffee enthusiasts, I had my preconceptions about what constitutes a "good" light roast.
My parameters were specific: I aimed for first crack at 9-10 minutes, with a development time of about 30 seconds after first crack for light roasts. I tried to replicate the Nordic style of roasting—extremely light, with readings that would make many commercial roasters raise an eyebrow.
The result? I was getting bright acidity with complexity, but very little sweetness. To me, this seemed logical—light roasts are typically more acidic and less sweet, right?
Wrong. At least according to some.
When discussing my experiment with a fellow coffee professional from the Netherlands, I was met with passionate disagreement. "No, no, that's too light," he told me. "I love light roast. You get sweetness in coffee. You don't get it really much in a medium roast."
This conversation perfectly illustrates what makes coffee so fascinating: its extreme subjectivity. What I consider a light roast might be too light for you, or what you consider a medium roast might register as dark to me.
And here's the fascinating reality many coffee drinkers don't consider: your roaster is likely roasting to their own preference, not yours.
When you purchase coffee, you're essentially buying someone else's interpretation of what that coffee should taste like. I call this a "personality cup"—it's the roaster's perspective on how those beans should be developed, what flavors should be emphasized, and what the final product should deliver.
It's similar to how different professionals might approach the same problem with entirely different solutions. Coffee roasters approach green beans with their own vision, biases, and preferences, which ultimately dictates what ends up in your cup.
Consider Starbucks, often cited as the quintessential dark roast example. Many specialty coffee enthusiasts quickly dismiss it as "burnt" or "over-roasted." Yet when I've actually measured Starbucks beans using precise equipment, they often register as medium roast according to industry parameters.
This disconnect reveals how deeply subjective our perception of coffee really is. What feels dark to one person might be medium to another. What tastes sour to you might taste perfectly balanced to me.
There's no universal grading system for roast levels—just individual interpretation filtered through personal experience.
As a roaster, I sometimes envy the average coffee enthusiast. My relationship with coffee is complicated by measurements, roast profiles, TDS meters, customer expectations, and business considerations. I'm constantly analyzing what went wrong, what could be better, whether the beans are fresh enough, and if I pushed a profile too far for my customers' preferences.
But you, the coffee drinker? You're in what I consider the enviable position of pure enjoyment.
You don't need to worry about the technical details. You can simply:
You have the freedom to trust or dismiss what's written on the bag. You can ignore brewing guidelines and make your coffee exactly how you want it. You can explore without the pressure of commercial considerations or technical precision.
At the end of your coffee journey, what matters most is your own experience. Coffee descriptions, roast levels, and tasting notes are merely suggestions—starting points for your own exploration.
What I hope you take away from this is simple: trust your palate. If a coffee is described as having notes of blueberry and chocolate, but you taste citrus and caramel instead, your experience isn't wrong—it's yours.
I encourage you to explore with an open mind, but always let your preferences guide you. Take tips and advice as invitations, not mandates. Remember that every coffee professional, myself included, is merely sharing their own subjective experience of this complex beverage.
Because at the end of the day, coffee isn't about being right or wrong. It's about finding joy in your cup, whatever form that may take.
I have a theory about light roasted coffee.
As someone who's spent years roasting, brewing, and tasting coffee across the spectrum, I've always found myself gravitating toward medium and dark roasts. But recently, I decided to challenge my own preferences with a week-long light roast immersion. I roasted five different coffees to a light profile and explored them through various brewing methods—pour over, AeroPress, immersion, Moka pot—all in pursuit of understanding what makes light roasts so beloved by many coffee enthusiasts.
My primary mission throughout this experiment was simple: find the sweetness. In coffee, as with fruit, balance is key to a satisfying experience. When you bite into a perfectly ripe piece of fruit, what makes it delightful is the harmony between acidity and sweetness. Coffee, being essentially a liquid fruit, should follow similar principles.
Yet, with light roasts, I consistently encountered a challenge—the sweetness that provides balance was elusive, often overwhelmed by complex layers of acidity.
"Sweetness adds balance in coffee," I kept reminding myself as I adjusted variables and tried different approaches. But even with meticulous attention to brewing parameters, finding that balance proved difficult.
One of the most fascinating discoveries during my light roast exploration concerned extraction. With my medium and dark roasts, I typically aim for 19-21% extraction. Push beyond that, and bitter notes quickly dominate, obscuring the coffee's character.
Light roasts, however, proved remarkably resilient. I found myself pushing extraction to 23%, 24%, even 25% without the coffee becoming unpleasantly bitter or muddled. Instead, these higher extractions continued revealing new dimensions of flavor complexity.
"You can beat the crap out of it," as I colorfully noted during one tasting session, "and it'll still be presenting something to you." The coffee remained clear and articulate even at extraction levels that would ruin a medium or dark roast.
Not all origins performed equally in my light roast experiment. The Colombian, Ethiopian, and Guatemalan coffees I tried presented bold, pronounced acidity profiles that seemed well-suited to light roasting. They offered what many light roast enthusiasts seek—vibrant, complex acidity with distinct character.
My Brazilian and Mexican coffees, however, presented more delicate, subtle acidity profiles when roasted light. These might appeal to someone who wants a gentler introduction to light roasts or prefers adding milk or cream to their coffee.
How you brew dramatically impacts your experience with light roasts:
Immersion Methods (Clever Dripper, AeroPress used as immersion): These methods dialed down intensity and allowed me to appreciate individual flavor notes more clearly. The gentler extraction helped me identify subtle nuances that might otherwise get lost in the overwhelming "all at once" sensory experience of other methods.
Pour Over Methods (V60, April Brewer): These methods intensified everything, creating a more concentrated flavor experience. While this can highlight brilliance in a well-balanced coffee, with light roasts I often found the result overwhelming—all acidity without the counterbalancing sweetness I craved.
Espresso: Surprisingly, this is where my light roast experiment took an unexpected turn. "Light roast shines in espresso," I concluded after tasting espressos made from my light roasted Colombian, Guatemalan, and Ethiopian coffees. The concentrated brewing method made the coffee "more heavy, more palatable," combining the complex acidity with enough body to create something more balanced.
One challenge when discussing light roasts is vocabulary. It's easy to fall back on generalities—"it's acidic, it's like lemon"—but the reality is more nuanced.
Just as a blackberry has a different acidic profile than a grapefruit, coffees express acidity in distinct ways. Building a mental catalog of these flavor memories helps tremendously when trying to articulate what we're tasting in coffee.
With light roasts, this challenge became even more pronounced. The array of flavor compounds sometimes presented as a unified front, making it difficult to separate and identify individual characteristics.
While this experiment reaffirmed my preference for medium and dark roasts, it gave me something equally valuable: understanding. I now better comprehend why light roast enthusiasts appreciate what they do, and I've expanded my own coffee horizons in the process.
"We don't have to love everything," I reminded myself during a particularly challenging brewing session, "but I think it's very important that we challenge ourselves to try to understand it the best way we can."
That's perhaps the most valuable takeaway for any coffee lover: openness to experience coupled with honest self-reflection. Coffee appreciation isn't about conforming to someone else's palate; it's about developing your own understanding and preferences through curious exploration.
As my light roast saga concludes (for now), I'm actually excited to return to my preferred medium and dark roasts with fresh perspective. The experience has sharpened my palate and given me new appreciation for the full spectrum of what coffee can be.
Whether you're a dedicated light roast enthusiast or, like me, typically gravitate toward other profiles, I encourage you to periodically venture beyond your comfort zone. The coffee world is vast and varied—there's always something new to discover, even if that discovery simply reinforces what you already knew about your preferences.
After all, every cup teaches us something, whether we're seeking balance, complexity, comfort, or simply a moment of pleasure in our day.
After attending the recent Coffee Expo in Houston, I've been reflecting on a significant disconnect I observed within the coffee industry – one that exists between specialty coffee enthusiasts and everyday coffee drinkers. This gap is more pronounced than many of us in the coffee world might want to admit, and it raises important questions about how we approach coffee culture as a whole.
Walking through the Expo, I encountered an impressive array of innovations – everything from advanced brewing equipment to specialized tasting tools designed to detect specific flavor notes. Vendors proudly served light-roasted coffees showcasing high acidity and complex flavor profiles. The event hummed with the energy of professionals discussing varietals, processing methods, and cupping scores.
But something was missing: the everyday coffee drinker.
The people who make up the vast majority of coffee consumers – those who brew at home in standard drip machines, who might add cream and sugar, who drink coffee for comfort and routine rather than as a sensory adventure – were largely absent. And it's worth asking why.
Consider these revealing insights about global coffee consumption:
These statistics paint a picture quite different from what was represented at the Expo. While the specialty coffee world often celebrates light roasts, pour-overs, and flavor complexity, the everyday coffee drinker gravitates toward medium-to-dark roasts prepared in automatic brewers, often with additions.
The barrier to entry for events like the Coffee Expo isn't just about knowledge – it's financial too. Weekend passes cost around $400, with single-day entries running between $110-220. For coffee professionals and dedicated enthusiasts, this might seem reasonable. But for the average coffee lover? As one friend put it: "The expo coffee drinkers are richy rich."
This pricing structure effectively ensures that only certain types of coffee drinkers attend – predominantly those already invested in specialty coffee culture. It creates a self-reinforcing bubble where the industry talks to itself rather than to the broader coffee-drinking public.
Don't misunderstand – I deeply value the standards the Specialty Coffee Association promotes. Their mission to "foster a global coffee community and support activities to make specialty coffee a thriving, equitable, and sustainable activity for the entire value chain" is admirable.
Setting high standards elevates the entire industry. When people care deeply about what they do – whether it's sourcing, roasting, or brewing – the end product improves for everyone. The dedication I witnessed at the Expo was impressive and genuine.
But I wonder: can we maintain those standards while being more inclusive of different preferences and brewing methods?
During the Expo, I had the opportunity to attend a Cup of Excellence event for just $20. Tasting these award-winning coffees was revelatory – they offered remarkable clarity and distinction of flavor that made them truly special. Interestingly, these weren't experimental anaerobic coffees (which make up less than 5% of specialty production) but rather exceptional examples of traditional processing done with extraordinary care.
This experience highlighted something important: excellence doesn't have to mean exclusivity. We can celebrate exceptional quality while still making great coffee approachable for everyone.
Rather than trying to convert everyone to specialty methods, what if we focused more on elevating the brewing methods people already use? Most coffee drinkers use automatic drip machines – so why not develop more resources around getting excellent results from these systems?
Some promising approaches might include:
The statistics clearly show that specialty coffee consumption in the US has grown by more than 25% since 2015. That's encouraging! But to continue this growth, we need to meet coffee drinkers where they are, not where we think they should be.
At the heart of both specialty and everyday coffee consumption is something profound: routine and comfort. Coffee rituals matter to all of us, whether it's carefully weighing beans for a pour-over or simply pressing the button on an automatic brewer while getting ready for work.
The most devoted specialty coffee enthusiast and the person who drinks coffee from a gas station share something important: they both find meaning and satisfaction in their daily cup. That common ground gives us a foundation to build upon.
I left the Coffee Expo with mixed feelings – impressed by the passion and innovation on display, but concerned about the widening gap between the industry and everyday consumers. The specialty coffee world has done remarkable work in elevating coffee quality, improving sustainability, and creating a more equitable value chain. These achievements matter tremendously.
Now, perhaps it's time to focus on the next challenge: making truly excellent coffee more accessible, approachable, and inclusive for all coffee lovers. Not by lowering standards, but by broadening our perspective on what good coffee can be.
Because at the end of the day, coffee is for everyone. There's enough room for all preferences, all brewing methods, and all types of coffee drinkers at this table. By bridging this disconnect, we can create a more unified coffee culture that celebrates excellence while welcoming everyone who loves their daily cup – however they choose to prepare it.
Coffee professionals have a secret that isn't often discussed: sometimes, we're too critical of our own creations. As someone who has spent years roasting, brewing, and analyzing coffee, I've fallen into this trap more times than I can count. It's a strange phenomenon where you taste your own coffee, convince yourself it's subpar, only to have customers rave about how much they enjoy it.
When you're deeply immersed in the coffee world, you develop a hypercritical palate. Every slight flavor imbalance becomes magnified. That subtle astringency? Catastrophic. That hint of underdevelopment? Unforgivable. But here's the reality check I've been working through: most coffee drinkers aren't experiencing your coffee through this hyper-analytical lens.
The average coffee enthusiast is looking for something enjoyable and interesting, not necessarily something that checks every box on a professional cupping form. This disconnect between how I evaluate my coffee and how others experience it has been both humbling and enlightening.
Recently, I've been experimenting extensively with light roasts, and I've come to a somewhat controversial conclusion: they're often not as interesting as the specialty coffee world makes them out to be.
Light roasts typically showcase high acidity with just hints of sweetness. While many coffee professionals celebrate this profile, I find many light roasts one-dimensional. They don't "speak" to me the way a well-developed medium or dark roast can. Even when perfectly extracted (I recently pulled a shot at 24% extraction with no bitterness), they often lack the complexity and depth I personally enjoy.
This isn't to say light roasts are objectively inferior—they're just not always my preference, despite their elevated status in specialty coffee circles.
We tend to romanticize coffee. We describe it in poetic terms, talking about how it "speaks to us" or creates "magical experiences." But sometimes, coffee is just coffee. Sometimes it disappoints. Sometimes it's boring.
This reminds me of a conversation with my late father. He once candidly admitted that aspects of everyday life can be boring—watching the same TV shows, drinking the same beverages, following the same routines. His honesty was refreshing. And it applies to coffee too.
Not every cup will be transformative. Some brewing methods will fall flat for you. Some trendy coffees won't align with your preferences. For me, cold brew and iced coffee have never excited my palate, regardless of how popular they become.
Putting yourself out there as a coffee professional means inviting criticism. Recently, someone pointed out that my brewing equipment was dirty in a video. Was it a little embarrassing? Sure. Was it true? Absolutely.
Years ago, I worried I didn't have the "thick skin" required to share my coffee journey publicly. But I've discovered that taking feedback—even the unsolicited kind—helps you grow. Not just as a coffee professional, but as a person who understands that different perspectives are valuable, even when they're uncomfortable.
The most liberating realization for any coffee enthusiast is that you don't have to like what everyone else likes. If light roasts don't excite you, that's okay. If you prefer your coffee brewed in an unfashionable way, that's fine too.
What matters is developing an honest relationship with your preferences. We can acknowledge what works for us personally while respecting that others experience coffee differently.
Coffee is subjective. What tastes like an unremarkable, acidic cup to one person might be a transcendent experience for another. The joy comes not from conforming to coffee trends, but from discovering what truly resonates with your own palate.
So the next time you taste a highly-rated coffee and think "this isn't doing it for me," know that you're not alone. Even coffee professionals sometimes look in the mirror and admit: not every cup sings.
Coffee enthusiasts often get caught in a familiar trap: we've spent good money on premium beans, we're using all the right equipment, but something just isn't clicking. That cup in front of you simply doesn't deliver the experience you were hoping for. Yet we persist, trying different brewing methods, adjusting variables, and hoping for a breakthrough that rarely comes.
After years of brewing, tasting, and occasionally being disappointed, I've identified three clear indicators that help me recognize when a coffee simply isn't aligned with my preferences—no matter how much I want it to be.
Recently, I experienced this with a Sumatran coffee that I was determined to enjoy. I spent nearly an hour adjusting every possible variable: water temperature, grind size, brewing device, technique—you name it. Despite my efforts, every cup tasted disappointingly flat. Nothing I did could coax any interesting flavors from those beans.
This experience taught me something valuable: when you've explored multiple brewing methods and nothing significantly improves your experience, it's probably time to accept that this particular coffee just isn't for you. Not every bean will be your perfect match, and that's completely fine.
One last-chance method I use to evaluate a disappointing coffee is brewing with Third Wave water. For those unfamiliar, Third Wave water is essentially water optimized for coffee extraction, with specific mineral content that helps bring out the best in your beans.
I think of Third Wave water as giving your coffee its final opportunity to reveal its true character. Much like people who might open up more after multiple conversations, coffee sometimes needs the right conditions to show its full potential. If a coffee remains lackluster even when brewed with Third Wave water, that's a strong indication it simply lacks the qualities you're seeking.
What makes this test particularly valuable is that it helps eliminate water quality as a variable. While grinders, brewers, and techniques are certainly important, sometimes even a modest setup with excellent water can produce a surprisingly good cup—if the coffee itself has quality to begin with.
Perhaps the most obvious yet overlooked factor is simply personal preference. Your taste buds are uniquely yours, and there's no objective "best" when it comes to coffee flavors.
I've learned to be honest about what I don't enjoy in coffee: excessive acidity without balancing sweetness, pronounced tomato notes, tea-like qualities, or lingering grapefruit rind bitterness. Recognizing and accepting these preferences has made my coffee journey more enjoyable and focused.
What one person loves about a particular coffee might be exactly what another dislikes. Understanding your own taste preferences allows you to select coffees that align with them, rather than trying to force yourself to appreciate profiles that simply don't resonate with you.
I often think about my experience with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from my childhood. As a kid, I thought it was absolutely brilliant—one of the greatest films ever made. Years later, I revisited it and couldn't even finish watching. The nostalgic lens had been stripped away, and I saw it for what it actually was: poorly acted, visually lacking, and generally underwhelming.
This same principle applies to our coffee experiences. While the ritual, community, and exploration of coffee brings joy to many of us, we shouldn't romanticize every aspect to the point where we can't recognize when something isn't working. Being objective about your coffee experiences isn't being negative—it's being honest.
When you recognize a coffee isn't meeting your expectations, use that information constructively. Understanding why certain coffees don't work for you can help you better identify ones that will. If you discover you dislike pronounced acidity, perhaps you'll gravitate toward naturally processed coffees with their typically lower acidity and more prominent fruit notes.
While expert opinions and tasting notes can provide helpful guideposts, ultimately you're the one experiencing that cup. Trust yourself. Your perception is what matters most in your own coffee journey.
Remember that even an "exceptional" coffee might not be exceptional for you, and that's perfectly fine. The beauty of the modern coffee landscape is the incredible diversity available—there are plenty of beans out there that will truly delight your unique palate.
By being honest about what doesn't work for you, you create space to discover what truly does.
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