I voted 'I like them for straight espresso, but not milk drinks'.

This is because I never ever drink a cappuccino or any other espresso with milk beverage.
My wife loves her cappuccinos, with light medium roasted beans.

I don't like the darker roasts...

But these answers were not available in the poll.

Got it! Thanks for the clarification. Then my experience was with "medium" roasts and not with light ones.

another_jim wrote:Most people currently call roasts dropped during the first crack, without any caramelization, or with only minimal traces of it, a light roast. City roasts are now described as medium or medium/dark roasts, and Full City roasts are now considered very dark.

I use a Tonino colour meter to determine roast levels (of ground beans), whether roasted by me or bought from a commercial roaster. This removes the semantic problem of determining what others mean by such words as dark, medium or light. Many discussions about methods of extraction would be clarified if this were to become a generally accepted practice (employing a common scale) across the serious coffee community.

I found with my old grinder (Baratza Vario with Ceramic burrs, maybe also with Eureka Specialita) and not being able to make really good / nice straight shots, before when I wasn't really that great with coffee, I liked how light roasts tasted with milk. I think especially with the Vario I'd get an interesting 'balance' of over extraction and under extraction so it creates a bright bitter coffee with a lot of body. With milk (and sugar) it tones it down and creates an enjoyable drink.

With my better higher clarity grinders, and with more coffee extraction knowledge and experience, I'm getting better shots which I CAN enjoy straight (I still add a little organic coconut sugar), I found I was using less and less milk for when I do add milk, and I also found some coffees do taste weird, or worse with milk, maybe sometimes you lose the interesting character of the coffee to the milk. Some light roasts coffees do work nicely with milk though, I had one that had a really nice strawberry note to it, with a little milk it was like a strawberry milkshake.

I love a good light roast either way. For me it mostly depends on what I'm making the drink for. If I'm going to sit an enjoy it on its own I'll pull a shot. If I'm working and focusing on other things, I'll make a milk drink so the coffee isn't a distraction - I find straight espresso is something that demands your full attention to thoroughly enjoy.

I do light roasts without milk and with sometimes, though not cow milk. I switched to oat milk a few years ago and haven't gone back. Overall I don't much like light roasts with cow milk as the chance of curdling is a good bit higher. Oatmilk is different and won't curdle.

Haven't found a light roast that didn't extract with a fruity slightly sweet taste. Makes added milk taste sour. Dark roasts are nutty and more chocolaty. Milk complements that.

I make light roast milk drinks at home and at cafes. Unfortunately there are no coffee shops serving medium roasted coffee at all, let alone who also know how to do latte art. It's either light or burnt. Maybe this is the 4th wave? (half joking)

I did have a great light roasted coffee latte a while ago. The fruity notes came through amazingly well.

Normally it's a bit sour and bland... this is a major problem with light roast coffees in cafes in milk drinks and straight espresso. Despite what you may think from reading HB, it's extremely hard to consistently pull proper espresso with light roasts at home or in a cafe setting.

I was just in Italy and did enjoy the milk drinks there with darker espresso, although it was a bit too dark and the foam was overly frothy most of the time. There was one very awesome shop in Milan that had a lighter and a darker roast on bar and you could choose. I miss this in the US. It seems like a trend that passed many places - the "espresso" roast.

bostonbuzz wrote:Despite what you may think from reading HB, it's extremely hard to consistently pull proper espresso with light roasts at home or in a cafe setting.

I find more precise dialling-in is needed for light roasts; but once I find parameters that work with my setup, consistency is not a problem. (I use a Kafatek grinder with high-extraction Shuriken burrs and a Londinium spring lever machine.)