For more knowledge about specialty coffee, please pay attention to: Front Street Coffee (Frontsteet Coffee）
The degree of roasting of coffee beans determines the flavor of coffee. Many coffee shops will indicate the degree of roasting on the coffee beans sold, such as light roast, medium roast, cinnamon roast, etc. This makes it confusing for those who are just getting started. In this article, Front Street will take you to understand the roasting degree and flavor trend of coffee. When the roasting degree is not displayed on the coffee bean packaging, how should we distinguish the type of roasted coffee beans in our hands, and what kind of grinding and water are used to ask how to brew it to make it taste better~
How do you define roasting level? At the beginning, each country had its own style of roasting coffee beans, and there was no unified standard. Various countries and regions consider light roasting, medium roasting, and dark roasting to be different and lack comparability. Therefore, as one of the authoritative representatives of the coffee industry, the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) teamed up with the Agtron company to use the coffee Agtron value as the standard in an attempt to unify the standard for coffee roasting degree, which later became one of the methods for testing the degree of roasting.
SCAAThe standard coffee roasting degree SCAA uses infrared caramelization analyzer technology (Agtron) to measure the color of coffee beans to determine the roasting degree of coffee, and divides the color into eight equal parts from light to dark to make eight standard color blocks for the coffee industry to identify as roasting. (Note: The caramelization tester (Agtron) is an optical instrument that uses infrared wavelengths to measure the roasting degree of coffee. This instrument can judge the degree of caramelization of the sugar inside the coffee bean and present it in a certain way. The range shown in this table from light roasting to heavy roasting is 25~100, but according to the Technical Standardization Committee of SCAA, the discernible range of coffee flavor is actually 30~90.)
/Lightly roasted (with rich fruit acidity and floral aroma) recommended Front Street Yirgacheffe coffee beans Agtron color value #95:
Light Roast: Bean planting time: the first crack intensive is about to end
Agtron color value #85: Cinnamon Roast: Bean placement time: around the end of first crack/Medium roast (obvious sweetness, balanced flavor) recommended Front Street Oiran coffee beans
Agtron color value #75: Medium Roast: Bean placement time: after first crack
Agtron color value #65: High Roast: Bean release time: the quiet period between the first crack and the second crack.
/medium dark roast(Mellow and sweet) Recommend Front Street Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee beans
Agtron color value #55: City Roast: Bean placement time: Second crack begins
Agtron color value #45: Full City Roast: Bean placement time: before the second burst.
/Dark roasted (mellow and full-bodied) recommended Front Street commercial blended coffee beans
Agtron color value #35: French Roast: Bean loading time: when the second crack is intensive
Agtron color value #25: Italian Roast: Bean loading time: oil begins to seep out of the bean surface
Determine the roasting degree of coffee beans from the flavor description. The coffee beans sold in Front Street do not indicate the roasting degree on the packaging. The reason is that the roasting in Front Street is mostly between medium light to medium dark roasting, but you can identify the roasting degree of the beans from the flavor description. For example, if there are sour aromas such as citrus, berry, and floral aroma, it can be defined as medium-light roasting (such as Ethiopian, Kenyan coffee beans and other African coffee beans, or Panama's Gesha coffee beans); if nutty aroma appears, it can be classified as medium roasting (such as Colombia, Costa Rica, and other Central and South American coffee beans); if nutty cocoa and low acidity description appears, it can be defined as medium-dark roasting (such as Brazil, Indonesia, Blue Mountain coffee beans, etc.).
How should coffee beans with different roasting levels be brewed? Take Front Street's coffee beans as an example. When brewing, Front Street uses medium-fine grinding (Chinese standard No. 20 screen pass rate is about 75-80%) for shallow to medium roasted coffee beans, and the brewing water temperature is 90-92°C. This grinding degree and water temperature can fully extract the sweet and sour substances without lacking a mellow feeling.
Medium-dark roasted coffee beans are ground medium (Chinese standard20No. screen pass rate is about65-70%), brewing water temperature87-89℃, with such a grinding degree and water temperature, the coffee can be rich, mellow and solid, while not prone to bitterness.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
