Stronger is better, right?

I’ve got news for you. You’ve been poorly trained in how to buy coffee. Yep, you’ve read that right.

In a bid to make things simpler for you, the supermarkets dug out the most basic of marketing techniques, and have adequately lulled you into a false sense of security using a fictional numbers based coffee strength spectrum. You’ve probably already decided you have a preference for a Strong Dark 5 or a Weak Gentle 3 and that’s that. But it’s all nonsense.

That “caffeine laden dark roast” you’ve been boasting about on social media is not actually as caffeine laden as you might think. And certainly not as caffeinated as the light roast you eschewed because it wasn’t “strong” enough to get your revs up in the morning.

Fact: the coffee roasting process actively removes caffeine. That means the darker the roast, or the longer the bean is roasted, the less caffeine it retains.

The art of the roaster is in toasting the beans at the right level, for the right amount of time, to balance out their natural acidity, sweetness and bitterness, while also retaining the coffee’s natural flavours. No small feat.

The lighter the roast, the more of the bean’s original flavours are retained. This sometimes comes with higher levels of acidity (often translated into coffee descriptions as fruitiness) but lower levels of bitterness.

Most artisan roasters lean towards creating lighter roasts because these bring out the natural flavours of the coffee.

It’s designed to make your coffee drinking experiences more akin to that of fine wine discovery, where different grapes, grown in different vineyards, picked by different winemakers, make different wines.

It also means that those darker roasts you think are pumped full of caffeine are actually more bitter, not less. Because we’re quite fond of a milky coffee in the UK, the darker roasts generally sold in coffee shops get away with their bitterness. Ask the Americano drinkers, however, and you might get a different spin on things.

So if you need more caffeine (and taste), why not step back into the light and start exploring lighter roasts which may surprise you – and keep you awake for longer. Check out our Aonach Mhor for a gentle entry into the world of lighter roasts.

Article First Published in The Menu Magazine on 14/05/2022 in The Courier and Press & Journal