What Color is Your Roast?

Just like taste, well roasted coffee is in the eye of the beholder. A Turkish proverb says that: “Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love.” That sounds more like some of my ex-boyfriends than coffee. (Sorry darling! ).

Customers often ask me about different roasts: which one tastes the best, which one should they buy, do we have dark roast, light roast, medium roast, etc. The answer in each case is “It depends.” What color is medium? Is a dark roast the color of dark chocolate or the color of charcoal? Do you like that burning sensation in the back of your throat when you drink that double-caramel-vanilla-hazelnut-macchiato latte?

Each year we take samples of Hula Daddy Kona Coffee and roast them to different degrees of darkness. We then pick the roast that maximizes the body against the acidity but still keeps subtle flavors like citrus, chocolate and cinnamon. We think there is a sweet spot where both the acidity and body are in balance. Usually we find that spot just at the edge of a dark roast when the beans have the same color as a Hershey dark chocolate bar.

Light roasts have higher acidity and less body. The darker the coffee is roasted the less acidity and the more body. People on the east coast seem to like lighter roasts, customers on the west coast like darker roasts. But one person’s medium roast is often another person’s dark roast. So here are some of the roasts used for Kona coffee with bean colors that you can understand: