In The Hot Seat

What role does roasting play in determining a coffee roast profile?

- Bruce Dennill

Your taste in coffee is entirely your business, isn’t it? If you want a certain flavour in your morning cup, you simply take out the same bag of beans you use every day, which you chose this time because you chose it last time and it was fine then.

Or is there more to it? Jonathan Robinson, Managing Director of Bean There Fair Trade Coffee, sees things differently, something he calls the ‘optimal roast’.

“It’s about getting the right roast degree based on each particular coffee,” he says.

“Some roasters will offer light, medium or dark roasts, based on customers’ preferences. But it’s about bringing out the best natural facets of the coffee, via a particular process.”

Is that an exact process? “Not really,” smiles Robinson. “It involves lots of roasting, drinking, cupping, wasting and arguing.

In terms of the tasting, what we’re looking for are florals, caramels, vanillas and acidity. If you roast a bean too light, it might be too acidic. Roasting beans dark might push the chocolate and caramels to the fore, as the roasting caramelises the sugars. But the longer you roast, the more the taste becomes ashier, and there’s a fine line between chocolate and charcoal.”

There’s only so much difference a food roaster can make, though, as the quality of the beans themselves plays a huge role in the outcome of the roast.