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Express Night Out | Arts & Events | The Coolest Beans: The District’s Top Iced Coffee

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Less Is More

There is a rather pervasive myth about coffee, namely that the darker the roast the stronger the brew. The truth is that there are two different and sometimes competing flavors, one inherent to the bean and the other a product of the roasting process. From a roaster’s perspective, I want to taste the coffee, not the roast. Much of what makes coffee interesting to me is, in fact, the complexity of the coffee, some or all of which gets lost in dark roasting as delicate flavor oils are broken down by excessive heat.

I strongly suspect that the myth of the dark roast is driven more by market realities than consumer taste. While light roasts have a lot of flavor within the first couple of weeks after roasting, the flavor oils are delicate and begin to oxidize outside that window, rendering the beans largely tasteless. By comparison, the burnt outside of dark roasted beans have a much more enduring, if less interesting, flavor that outlasts lighter roast. Since most roasters can’t get their coffee beans on the shelves, much less put them in consumers’ hands, within a week or two of roasting, it doesn’t make much sense to sell light roasted coffees that are only really good for a couple of weeks. So, instead they sell dark roasted or artificially flavored coffees, both of which don’t reflect the beans natural depth and complexity.