With global warming (and other factors) affecting coffee production and prices, I’ve noticed a couple of interesting patterns in marketing strategies for household and white label brands.
Everything is extra intense, high intensity, intensity 11 (probably comes with a free Spinal Tap record)… Robusta roasted past 5th crack, no doubt.
I also spotted a bag of highly exclusive “100% Robusta.” At this point I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and for them to market “0% cyanide” coffee.
How’s everybody else’s grocery shopping experience these days? Is this a big trend in your area?
That’s not the case around me, where the fancier the coffee shop the lighter the roast typically. And many smaller roasters are selling very pale cinnamon roasts under the heading “medium”.
The trouble is, many people really dislike an acidic light-bodied cup full of floral notes. Plus often they’re not especially skillfully made and I’m pretty sure some people are reacting to very thin acidic, sometimes woody and vegetal, cups and assuming that if they don’t like this, they must want dark roasts.
As usual, it’s shouldn’t be a binary, and they might enjoy a traditional medium roast, or perhaps a better prepared lighter roast. Personally I hate acrid, shiny-bean dark roast, but I’m not sure I hate it more than some of the cups of woody acid I’ve been offered from some enthusiast “high end” coffee shops around here.
Another possibility is just that light roasts can just be too fiddly for most people to want to bother with. Between the money for equipment and time spent brewing it, it’s probably just too great an investment for most people to take something from at least acceptable to them to being great, after a while when you get things dialed in and the stars align.
Sure, though to many of us it’s a lot of money and investment to take something from very unpleasant to kind of palatable.
Sure, I was just trying to say that while some people will dislike the flavor of the currently vaunted light roasts, even when properly brewed, I think there is a pretty sizeable number of people who would like them well enough, but just find it too much hassle. Especially outside of the specialty coffee scene, where you see more and darker roasts, in my experience
When Costco or someone puts out a dark roast on the shelves, they generally aren’t competing for customers that drink single lot beans from your favorite café, they’re looking to get the people who find McDonald’s coffee or Dunkin Donut’s good enough, but want to save a bit of money by brewing at home.