What is Coffee Roasting?

Coffee roasting is simply heating the coffee bean to prepare it for brewing. Coffee beans are roasted at temperatures between 370 to 450 degrees for up to twenty minutes. As the beans are roasted they lose about twenty percent of their weight and change from green to tan and eventually to dark brown.

The amount of time a bean is roasted determines the type of roast. As one would expect, less roasting time creates a light roast and more roasting time creates a dark roast. Roasting also changes the flavor of the coffee. Lighter roasts contain more subtle flavors of the coffee bean itself, and darker roasts get more of their flavor from the roasting process. Each variation is named, and quite often there are many regional names for the same type of roast. One interesting fact is that lighter roast coffees have more caffeine than darker roast coffees since the roasting process tends to break down the caffeine.