French Roast Coffee Conspiracy Part 1

To French Roast or Not to French Roast? That was my question. I thought we would start at the beginning with what is a French Roasted coffee; here is the science part of my answer.

Technically speaking French Roasted coffee is brought to temperatures between 435°F and 465°F over a predetermined time. This goes all the way from a light French Roast and a dark French Roast. As the temperature of the bean rises, moisture in the bean starts to evaporate and the oils are being brought to the surface. At this point the bean has gone through first and second crack. It sounds like popping corn, smells like toasting wheat and will start to smoke. If you ever get the opportunity to watch a roaster in action, take advantage of it.

A French Roast coffee beans will be medium dark brown to dark brown and about two days after the beans has been roasted it will have tiny droplets of oil forming on the medium dark and the dark will have an entirely oil surface.

There are many names for this same roast, depending on where you live in the world and even which area of the US you live. Starting with your medium dark roast they could be called: Viennese, Full-City, Light French, Continental & After Dinner, moving into moderately dark roast: French, European High & Continental and on to the dark roast: French, Italian & Dark Turkish. Now at some point in recent years a new terms started being used to refer to a roast and that is Espresso. The term Espresso is often used in all three groups, but Espresso is really a blend of coffees and can be roasted to any of these temperatures depending on the quality of the coffee and the care of the roaster. Espresso is another topic that can be address all by itself. There is a lot to be said about Espresso. We can talk later on that one.

Have you drunk a French Roast coffee? What origin? What did you and your mouth think of it? Do you have any questions so far?

In part two we will talk about the taste and do I really want my coffee French Roasted, or did some well know roaster spend a lot of money to convinced us all that it is good and oh so chic that way?

I will drop in some more technical terms for the fun of it.