Dark Roast Coffee

Dark Roast Coffee

Dark roast coffee is a dark brown colour and often has an oily surface. These coffees have a low acidity, heavy body, and tend to reveal deeper, darker flavours.

Coffees roasted to this level tend to not have many of their origin characteristics left, but that doesn’t mean that these are bland and boring. Some coffees really lend themselves to a dark roast because they thrive with chocolate-y, nutty, and caramel flavours.

The difference between light and dark roast coffee is quite dramatic. I highly suggest trying a light and a dark coffee side-by-side to really taste the difference.

Specialty coffee roasters rarely have more than 1 or 2 dark roast offerings. Without much flavour diversity amongst beans (dark roasting increased uniformity), there’s no reason to have many.

Dark roast coffee has long reigned king, largely because coffee quality wasn’t great in the past. Roasters would “roast away” the less desirably flavours of low grade coffee to find deeper, more uniform, and more approachable ones.

This was an understandable way to combat low quality coffee, but it’s no longer needed. Specialty grade coffee has never been more available to roasters.

Now, the goal of a specialty roaster isn’t to roast away bad flavours, but lean into deeper, darker pleasant ones if a particular coffee calls for it.

Dark roast coffees reach 430-450 degrees Fahrenheit in the roaster and typically reach second crack, if not a little beyond.

Other names include: full city, vienna roast.