Roasters Rant Or Temper Tantrum?
Jun 07, 2017
I am not sure what to call this piece, a rant or a tantrum.
The next person who asks for a Dark Roast can get a .... (add own punishment here)
"Do you light roast?" is just as bad!
FFS would you ask a top chef to undercook or overcook a steak? No, you want the damn thing at perfection. Loads of fat and needs the fat rendered, well that won't be the same cooking time and temperature as a grass fed piece of venison.
Now our attempt at Truth is to fully develop the available flavours. The Maillard Reaction has the molecules going from tasting like raw coffee to all the delightful nuances and complexity we need from a luxury coffee.
The Maillard reaction (/maɪˈjɑːr/ my-yar; French pronunciation: [majaʁ]) is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that give browned food its desirable flavour. Seared steaks, pan-fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, bread, toasted marshmallows, and many other foods undergo this reaction.
Now if we don't fully develop them, the coffee will taste grassy, green, in our words, under-developed. That is too light roasted.
IF we over-develop them the same molecules go through Pyrolisis, our they burn and taste bitter.
So our only goal is to do neither. To stand out of the best beans we can lay our inquisitive paws on. And stay the HELL out of their way!
This is roasting for an optimum. We don't choose we test, and taste, and re-. It is why every roast we do is tested, tasted and analysed. It is what we do!
So our new D.D.T. blend (Deep, Dark & Twisted) is not a Dark Roast. Nor is it a light roast. Nor do we care how the individual components are classified, in a non-extant scale that we do not buy into.
It is, however, a strong blend unique in a lack of Acidity, no, not sourness, none of our blends is sour, unless Under-Extracted, a Barista error, best saved for another Rant, another day.
