The Bitter Truth About Starbucks Coffee
Why every global coffee brand loves a dark roast
It wasn’t until I was 29 years old, spending a year living in Costa Rica, that I had my first real cup of coffee. As an inner-city middle school teacher, the first six years of my professional life were fueled by an unhealthy Diet Coke habit. Little did I know that my first cup of coffee, enjoyed at El Toledo coffee farm, would ruin me once I returned stateside.
Upon moving back to the Midwest, I tried Starbucks and our local coffee chain, but I noticed a huge difference in taste. Sure, that probably made me a coffee snob. Still, I couldn’t help but balk at the bitter and burned taste that accompanied every cup.
The chemistry of coffee
As it turns out, there was a good reason for my sudden aversion to the beverage I had grown to love in Costa Rica. See, broadly speaking, there are three different types of roasts: light, medium, and dark.
In a dark roast, bitter is the predominant flavor. That’s because bitter is the flavor you get when things get burned.
Dark roast is far and away the most common in the United States. For many of us, it’s all we’ve ever tasted. We associate…
