by TJ Semanchin, Peace Coffee Roaster Extraordinaire

French Roast, our darkest roast, has an intense flavor crafted with a subtle touch. While my pallet tends toward our lighter roasts, our French roast is our best seller and something we are very proud of. From the roaster’s perspective, dark roasts are tricky business since some of the coffee bean’s inherit flavors fade as the beans approach the darker brown color. (All these flavors are obliterated at super dark –- a.k.a. Burnt -- roasts.) The challenge is to bring out that intense, smoky roast flavor while preserving the sweetness and unique characteristics of the coffee. We accomplish this in our French Roast by carefully lowering the heat in the roasting drum near the end of the roast. This technique protects the sugars and oils in the bean, and the rich and sweet chocolate notes and floral aroma still poke through the dark roast flavor we all know and love.

While we are on the subject, I’ll touch on a frequent misconception of dark roasts. Folks often equate dark oily beans to higher or fresher quality. This is not necessarily true. The oils found on the outside of a bean occur mainly in darker roasted coffee. This is because as a bean is roasted it expands and eventually the oils will get “pushed” to the surface of the bean. Light roasts aren’t oily because this process occurs after a light roast is finished roasting. In essence, the oils stay inside a light roast bean. So these oils have nothing to do with freshness, and in fact, these oils will oxidize (if exposed to oxygen) and stale faster than “dry” beans.

If you have any roasting questions, please drop me an email at tj@peacecoffee.com

keepin’ it fresh,

T.J.

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