Episode Details
Back to Episodes
I Still Don't Like Light Roast. I Keep Coming Back.
Description
I've spent years with light roast drinking it, roasting it myself, taking it as light as I can control and I still haven't decided that I like it. That's the honest starting point of this one. What keeps pulling me back isn't sweetness, even though I'm quietly still hoping to find it. It's the acidity, and specifically whether it has layers: whether it shows up as blackberry and then turns into something like crisp apple and finishes as a Meyer lemon, whether it lingers, whether it changes as the cup cools. That's interesting enough to keep me making cups of something I'm not sure I enjoy.
I'm in a strange position to be saying this. I roast coffee. I've run light roast every way I know how my profiles, other people's profiles, fast starts, extended development, nine and ten minute first cracks. So I know what I can pull out of a lightly roasted coffee, and I still often don't love the result. For a long time I read that as a failure of mine. This episode is me deciding it isn't.
The part I'd most want you to take is the thing I wrote down before I sat down: the gift of not liking something is that you can finally be honest and objective about why. When a coffee is amazing, it talks to me and I stop asking questions rose-colored glasses. When a coffee doesn't move me, I see it clean. I can name what's happening. That clarity is worth having, and it's why going on a ride with a category you don't love is worth doing at all. It's not about tricking yourself into enjoying it. It's about being straight with yourself, so that when you come back to what you do love, you can say why.
And I'm still curious about you. Where does the sweetness arrive for you in a light roast at the tail end, as something chocolatey? Is the acidity the whole reason you're there, or is it the combination? Somebody out there is tasting things in the same cup I'm not tasting, with a recipe that looks simple, and I want to understand that more than I want to understand the coffee. You have to want to go on the ride even with the coffees you didn't choose because what you learn along the way is mostly about yourself.
Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com
For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans
For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com