I disagree with this. It's clearly personal preference. As an ex barista, I used to enjoy the shit that knocked your fucking socks off, which was always dark roasts. The sort of stuff that is standard fare in mediterranean countries. My absolute favourite however was Indian coffee. I used to describe that to customers as like being punched in the face by a film noir detective. Real good shit.
> I disagree with this. It's clearly personal preference.
you are correct that you might like the taste of dark roasted coffee as a personal preference, but that's not a "quality" quality, it's a taste preference. But you can make that strong dark coffee out of virtually any beans, just roast them to near death, it doesn't matter what you start with. Like chocolatey notes? you're in luck! that's called Brazilian coffee, and it's really really cheap to buy the beans.
You may not like more lightly roasted tea-like coffee flavors, but they have more distinct differences, fruit notes, etc, that you would easily be able to taste and differentiate between, even if it's not your preference.
being a barrista gives you a leg up on knowing about the coffee you tried regularly, but not on the coffee you haven't, and it takes a substantial amount of time to develop a palate, as with wine tasting.
> being a barrista gives you a leg up on knowing about the coffee you tried regularly
we used to have two different guest blends every week at one of the coffee shops I used to work at. So I've tasted a lot of different varieties of coffee. I prefer dark roasted coffee.
And no, you can't make what I'm talking about out of 'virtually any beans'. You can make burnt, shit coffee out of any beans. They are different things.
Just because you have a preference for light fruity coffee does not mean you get to determine what is 'quality' for the rest of us.
I'm judging quality as the market judges quality which generally equals higher priced (the only exception are coffees (or wines etc.) have "brand" recognition or are near tourist areas and the tourists drive the prices up in the excitement of buying from where they are, Kona.)
dark roasting coffee decreases the subtle differences between beans. The more you roast, the more the aromatics disappear. full stop, theres no way around it. You are not going to buy the most expensive coffees to dark roast unless you are a fool. But as you say, there are differences between heavily roasted beans, as an example I mentioned, some might have chocalate notes.
If you search for "Indian coffee Bibi Plantation" you should be able to find some. It makes for crazy good filter coffee. Probably wouldn't recommend it for espresso unless you're going to mix it into a custom blend. Blends are normally better than single origins for espresso.
I haven't had any in a long time. You used to be able to buy it from HasBean but they don't sell it any more but there seems to be quite a few places you can still get it. Indian coffee from the Bibi plantation:
