Collection: Light Roast Coffee

Light roast means the beans leave the drum before the sugars have caramelised far, usually just past first crack. What survives is what the farm and the process put there: acidity, floral notes, fruit, a tea-like clarity. What you give up is the roasty chocolate character most people associate with coffee in general. Neither is better. They are different amounts of interference between you and the origin.

Light roasts are denser and harder to extract, so nearly every problem you will have with one is under-extraction dressed up as sourness. Grind finer than you think, push the water to 94 to 96C, and give the bag ten to fourteen days off roast rather than seven. Light roasts hold their gas longer and a very fresh one tastes closed and thin. If it is still sharp after that, extend the brew rather than dropping the temperature. These reward filter methods far more than pressure.

The vocabulary here, first crack and density and under-extraction, is explained in our coffee glossary.