though i love beans roasted miles away from home, i more often buy locally. The roaster i frequent is near my home and so far no real complaints.
but recently i have been noticing dark spots on my light roasts, i would describe them as burn marks on some of the beans. i would imagine the bean should be uniform in color. something i don't notice on beans say from CCC.
is this normal or a sign of inferior roast quality?

Person had their drum too hot when they charged it and scorched the beans. If you break one open, is the interior an even color? I bet the core of the bean is a lighter color than the outside from the high drum temp. That throws the roast profile all off, I doubt you will find the coffee drinkable.

That's really bad and shouldn't have been sold. The people doing the roasting didn't even look at the beans when they were dumped for cooling, never mind during the roast.

Way too hot a drum; or maybe even more likely, the airflow got blocked.

another_jim wrote:That's really bad and shouldn't have been sold

Sadly I bought couple of times beans that looked like that from "specialty" small roaster that advertises here and shall stay nameless. Needless to say I will not buy again. Espresso tasted as bad as those beans looked...

in their defense they don't ALL look like that, i picked out some of the worse looking ones but still thought something must have gone wrong with their recent batches, i had never noticed this before with the same blend. Could it be they have someone new working the roaster?
i just tried them right now and i had trouble with it, cant seem to get body out of it, could that be related?
the taste isn't THAT bad, but will have to hide the shots in milk this week.

its a shame, they are real nice people there id hate to discard them over their recent quality. Should i talk to them about it?

Yes, they are probably not aware of it and would improve their coffee. If they aim for a better cup, they will try to fix it.