Thanks for your article, even though I disagree with you.
First I just have to mention, I made a similar facial expression to the woman in the banner image when I saw that her eating a lemon was used to illustrate bitter taste. A lemon isn’t bitter! If anything, biting into a lemon is akin to drinking a blonde roast. The sourness (or “acidity” for coffee snobs) is part of the original coffee taste and actually disappears in longer roasting processes, where it often gets replaced by bitterness.
But I’d argue that bitterness is not a necessary by-product of more intensive roasting processes. I’ve tasted some that were quite bitter, and others that were not so bitter but just pleasantly roasty. There’s actually a wide variety of quality in the roasting process: you can get a dark roast by roasting the beans for a short time at high temperatures (cheaper, usually lower quality), or by roasting them for a longer time at lower temperatures (better). A lot of smaller artisan coffee roasters are very proud of their quality long roasting processes. Of course, the kind of coffee beans also makes a difference.
Personally, I like blonde, medium and dark roasts … but I like the medium to dark roasts the most. FWIW, I prefer cappuccino, which I think blends a bit better with darker roasts. Many Italian roasts (which are usually very dark) are just bitter and disgusting in my opinion, and some discounters sell espresso that’s roasted so aggressively you barely taste anything other than the roast notes (which, tbh, is a guilty pleasure of mine, occasionally anyway). But there are some really great tasting dark roasts, with deep flavors and lots of variety, and I especially like those that contain a bit of Robusta (one of my favorites is Nespresso’s Dharkan). And while I wouldn’t score Starbucks’ Espresso Blend particularly high, I think it has a very distinct, extremely pleasant flavor (at least in a cappuccino). It’s the unmistakable Starbucks flavor, and it tastes different from everything else! I also like their Peru coffee.
In contrast, while I also like mild blonde roasts, I really don’t like the sourness that accompanies some. Bitterness is an acquired taste of sorts, but sourness is just unpleasant to me.
