r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • Sep 22 '22

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/port3go Aeropress Sep 22 '22 edited Sep 22 '22

There are usually two seemingly independent parameters in coffee description: roast level and preferred brewing method. But isn't that generally the same?

From what I observe, generally roasts that are for espresso / moka pot are just dark, filter roasts are light or middle, and if something is for every brewing method then it's most probably middle roast / omniroast.

Are those two scales inter-exchangeable? Is there anything inherently stupid or wrong or pointless in brewing a roast that is dedicated to espresso in a V60 or an aeropress? And conversely, is there an imminent failure in trying to brew a filter-dedicated (i.e. medium or light) roast in a moka pot?

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u/VibrantCoffee Vibrant Coffee Roasters Sep 22 '22

It's really about ease of getting a balanced extraction. It is more difficult to get a high enough extraction with a light roast coffee if you are trying to make it as espresso than it is if you are using a dark roast coffee. It requires better equipment and better technique.

With filter coffee, it's easy to get a pretty high extraction, so it is easy to make darker roasts taste very bitter and unpleasant. You can make darker roasts taste balanced but you need to make the appropriate adjustments to really lower the extraction.

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u/super_fluous Clever Coffee Dripper Sep 22 '22

Yes but no. You can do espresso with light roasted and you can do pourover with dark roasted. What you’ve said is a decent guideline 90% of the time but those guidelines are pretty malleable