One of my first jobs was at a big box grocery store in the GTA.  Working there, I learned a few of their marketing secrets that I carry with me  today whenever I’m shopping for myself.  Fish that can no longer be sold as ‘fresh’ will instead be coated with Teriyaki sauce and sold as ‘marinated’ fish.   Meat that can no longer be sold as ‘fresh’ will be used to make prepared foods.  

Why does coffee from macro-roasters taste burnt? 

Selling fresh is hard!  It’s much easier for macro-roasters (Starbucks, Lavazza, Kicking Horse, etc.) to produce at one central plant, often located in a low-cost location, then ship to warehouses and finally to stores.  It’s very efficient and low-cost.  But there are downsides to the consumer.  One major one is that it’s not possible for coffee to arrive fresh at the grocery store. By the time the coffee has arrived it’s been sitting around for weeks or months and has travelled 1000s of kms.  What is saved in efficiency is lost in transport and in freshness. The consumer is cheated. However, by over-roasting the coffee to the point where its burnt, it doesn’t matter if the coffee is fresh or been sitting in warehouses for months, because it’ll generally taste the same. The flavour is consistently….poor.

The second biggest reason is to disguise the fact that they may be using low-quality beans. If you over-roast a low-quality and high-quality bean the resulting flavour profiles will be similar, you homogenize the taste and disguise the quality of the bean. For the same reason you should avoid ordering your steak well-done, you should steer away from coffee that tastes burnt and err on the side of caution if its marketed as ‘bold flavour’ or ‘dark’. We’ll leave it to our old friend and mentor Anthony Bourdain to explain.  In his best-selling memoir “Kitchen Confidential” he wrote “Saving meat for ‘well done’ is a time-honoured tradition dating back to cuisine’s earliest days: meat costs money. So what happens when the chef finds a tough, slightly skanky end-cut of sirloin, that’s been pushed repeatedly to the back of the pile? He can save it for well-done – serve it to some rube who prefers to eat his meat incinerated into a flavorless, leathery hunk of carbon, who won’t be able to tell if what he’s eating is food or flotsam.  The dumb (customer) is paying for the privilege of eating his garbage!”  Mic drop. No further explanation required. Thank-you Mr. Bourdain.

Experiment 

If you’re hooked on burnt coffee from macro-roasters, do yourself a favour and experiment with what your local roasters are producing.  You will be amazed at the difference. Subscribe or purchase one-time to experience the difference with My Local Coffees!