We need to stop conflating different issues to stop this thread going off the rails.

First up, yes, a lot of expensive coffee sucks. This is because a lot of roasters suck for a lot of reasons - it may be misdescribed, or poorly roasted. You may also personally not like coffee that delivers exactly what it is supposed to. All of these are considerations that apply equally to dark roasts. The only difference is that light roasts are likely to cost a lot more, because it is generally thought that light roasts can be more distinctive and different, so if roasters are paying more for distinctive coffee, they are more likely to roast it lighter, since why would you pay more for distinctiveness if you are going to roast it in a way that the roast flavours overwhelm the individual qualities of the green?

Next, I know everyone hopefully knows this, but missing from the discussion is how much the roaster has paid for the green coffee. If roasters pay more for distinctiveness, they may well be charging more for light roasted coffee because they have paid a lot more for the green. Paying more isn't a guarantee of quality. Sometimes roasters have to pay more to secure green from a producer that has the good fortune of bidding wars and high demand for their coffee. Sometimes roasters pay more because they are buying from an importer and the importer has a big markup; the roaster may be paying more because they can't get the coffee directly or more cheaply themselves, because they are baby roasters and not confident green buyers and are paying a premium for the endorsement of a grownup, because the roaster is buying spot as part of a shrewd and well-considered buying program that uses spot purchases to fill gaps so that they have a low risk of over-buying and being saddled with coffee that sits, because they are jumping on the bandwagon of the new hotness of some producer that they have seen some other roaster buy or some competitor use ... there are a whole bunch of reasons why roasters might pay more for green that aren't necessarily an evaluation by the roaster that the coffee is worth more based purely on cup quality. Or maybe their green buyer did just stumble across the most mindblowing cup they've ever tasted and bid for it at any cost! And there's of course a whole discussion of fixed and variable costs and business financing and what a roaster's retail price for small lots of very expensive green ought to be relative to their own retail costs for their espresso blends. But the point is that at the very least, we have to acknowledge that the roaster may well have paid more for the green!

What I'm getting at here is that it would be nice to elevate this thread to a discussion of things that can actually improve the cup that readers get, or improve their chances of buying coffee that they will like, rather than degenerating into either or both of:
**"One time, I bought an expensive coffee and I didn't like it ..." OR
**"One time, I bought a light roast and I didn't like it ..."
"... THEREFORE emperor has no clothes, all light roast expensive coffees suck."

And, having said that, yes, just recently I had a big whinge to an Aussie barista that wants to start running coffee "education" sessions that most light roast expensive coffees (particularly in Australia) do suck. But that doesn't mean that all light roasts suck and that all expensive coffee is not worth it. What it means is that we need to get to a position of distinguishing when:
1. Green or roast sucks and consumers have been fleeced.
2. Green and roast are acceptable and consumers have the wrong expectations (either by their own fault or by the roaster's poor descriptions).
3. Green and roast are good and meet the consumer's expectations.

What really irritates me is that the industry basically gaslights consumers. Commonly roasters copy paste descriptions from importers that might be from the pre shipment sample at a particular peak of quality and an aromatic roast level, but then they just use that description and roast it differently for their production roasts so that it doesn't taste that way. And then those that do describe their own roasts sometimes do it hyperbolically. Like there's one light roaster of expensive coffees that I know that always has like six to eight aroma descriptors that are all fancified. So if I, or one of his competitors, would describe a washed coffee as "lemon and floral", he will describe it as "meyer lemon zest, Sicilian bergamot, neroli essence, jasmine, coffee blossom and tea rose". He isn't actually describing six different flavours; he is giving you three fanciful synonyms for two distinctive flavours; he has the same green as his competitors and he isn't getting any different flavours out of it, though his roasts might be a little better than some competitors, and more expensive.

But the point is that this thread is going to be useless if it degenerates into a whinge-fest of people expressing their personal like or dislike of particular roast levels or their personal disappointments, because most roasters are deeply underwhelming.

Can we try to keep the discussion on helping us all to find coffee that we like, to which point the discussion of resting periods is quite interesting.

I'll add a little tangent that may help people to increase their hit rate: if you are looking at buying an expensive light roast (or any coffee, really, for that matter) from a roaster you're not all that familiar with and you're wondering how you can get a sense of how good they are likely to be, go to the roaster's webpage and find the first paragraph where they tell you that Jimmy Rodriguez de la Muerte inherited Finca el Mentiro from his father and has introduced a program of growing slime moulds as an enviornmental sustainability initiative. Copy that description paragraph and search it in google. Most of the time, you will see from the search results that the whole story has been copy pasted from an importer. So you will see the importer's page for that coffee. Get the importer's flavour description and compare it to the roaster's description. If the roaster has just copy pasted the importer's tasting notes, at least you know that, whatever level of work and effort they have put into that coffee, it looks like they haven't even gone to the effort of coming up with their own independent taste description (unless they are in raging agreement with the importer) and you may be able to ... adjust your expectations accordingly.

luca wrote:Get the importer's flavour description and compare it to the roaster's description. If the roaster has just copy pasted the importer's tasting notes, at least you know that, whatever level of work and effort they have put into that coffee, it looks like they haven't even gone to the effort of coming up with their own independent taste description (unless they are in raging agreement with the importer) and you may be able to ... adjust your expectations accordingly.

As much as I would love to believe that a correlation existed between how well or originally a roaster (or importer for that matter) described a coffee, and the quality of that coffee and/or roast, I have found it unreliable at best. Eloquence and truth are completely independent of one another.


FWIW, I'm doing some "scientific research" this morning. I found a 12oz bag of light-roasted Colombia coffee with a roast date of 7/1. I also happened to have the same coffee on drip at the bar so I decided to compare. Same coffee, same roaster, same roast profile, identically ground and brewed on the same side of my Fetco batch brewer. The only difference is they were roasted 2 months apart.

I put the two pots on the bar and asked my black coffee drinking customers to participate in a survey. I asked them 2 questions: What is the difference between them and if you had a choice, which would you choose as your coffee today?

My assessment: the older coffee has all the sweetness and acidity of the fresher roast. No additive flavors good or bad. Very smooth and enjoyable. But not unlike a portrait photograph, where the subject is cropped from the background, what is missing is the nutty, toffee notes that give the highlights their context.

The voting has been interesting. Almost everyone has picked the fresher roast as having more to it, some simply saying it seems a little stronger, others just saying it tastes a little different. But interestingly, almost half the participants, including my assistant roaster said they would choose the older coffee.