Coffee roasting is a lot like popping popcorn. When the inside of the corn kernel reaches a certain temperature the shell pops open and viola, popcorn. With coffee, there are two shells to split, one on the surface of the green coffee bean and the second on the inside of the bean. During roasting the audible splitting of the shells is called a “crack”. I can hear the second crack about 3 minutes after the first crack.

It is hard to find consensus on what to call the different degrees and colours of roasted coffee. It seems that across the world different coffee roasting associations have a different name for a specific colour of roast. Even across North America there are different opinions of what the names should be. The Pacific coast tends to like darker coffees that the east coast and so the common names of the roasts mean different things. The names range from Cinnamon for a very light brown roast to Dark French/Neapolitan/Spanish for a very dark brown colour. My roast styles begin at a full city roast and gos to the Dark French roast. With my roaster, the Full City roast happens to co-inside with the second crack of the coffee beans, so it is a good process control point.

The chart above gives you an idea of the colour development during a roast. Bean #1 is the green bean and Bean #16 would be Dark French roasted bean. My roasting style tends to be from #13 to #16. This is what I call the Dark Side.