WHY DO TRENDY SHOPS TELL ME LIGHT ROASTS ARE BETTER?

Dear Tall Dark Roasted and Handsome,

The Chemex is indeed highly instagrammable! Keep on slammin’ and ‘grammin! 

My short answer - you do you, if you like dark roast, go with it! Don't let the trendy shops get you down about your tastes.

There is a lot of pressure to like light roasts out in the coffee landscape these days. The cool kids are building a light roasted monoculture in coffee and I won't stand for it. Hahahah! No, but really.

A word about the current light roasting trend. Roasters roast light for good reasons, usually to preserve and highlight delicious flavor characteristics in the green(unroasted) coffee. Heck, that’s why we roast some of our coffees light here at One Village Coffee.

There's an idea floating around roasting culture these days that light roasting is the only correct way to honor farmers and workers who touched the coffee before us, that roasters should be careful not to influence the inherent flavors of the coffee. It's an idea with merit, and I mostly agree with it.

But oftentimes the result is thin and sour coffee that doesn't taste great. We're training roasters to be scared to let the beans get too brown. I think there is a healthy balance to strike somewhere in there, a both and roasting bullseye, if you will. That's what I'm going for.

Plus dark roasts taste bomb with milk, am I right!?

-Steve