Acidity, Roast Level & Body
Hello Everybody!
I’m sure you all have noticed the handy dandy scales at the bottom of each of our coffee descriptions… you know, the ones that tell you the roast level, acidity and body of the coffee. These are great tools when trying to figure out what coffee is best for you. But, they only come in handy if you know what these terms mean. So, allow me to drop some knowledge on you…
I’m gonna go ahead and assume that we all know what roast levels are… we offer light, City, French and Dark Roasts. Light… is the lightest and Dark… um… Dark is the Darkest. Got it? Good… moving on!
Now, Acidity is a different story. This has a lot to do with flavor; it is through the acidity that fruit and floral flavors are identified.
The folks over at coffeegeek.com recommend tasting a coffee from Sumatra next to one from Kenya in order begin to understand acidity.
Body has to do with the weight of the coffee or how heavy it feels in your mouth. Appearance has a lot to do with it too. If you look at a coffee that appears to be thick it would have a heavier body than one that appears more opaque.
Um… I guess explaining this was little more difficult than I had thought.
For more information, check out Coffee Geek’s article on cupping.
I would love to see a section or information somewhere that offers typical roasting settings, such as light medium or dark to the novices among us that roast their own beans. For example, if I were to buy roasted coffee, Sumatra, what roast setting to you folks sell it as? I know nothing is etched in stone but it would be useful to have a typical starting point.