To my coffee drinking friends in the American East (and elsewhere): I'm curious, has third wave coffee arrived? Did it get lost in translation?
Here's why I ask: I picked up some coffee in Boston recently, and I am shocked, shocked! I say, by the definition of light roast that seems to be in play. First, a pricey bag of venerable Gesha Village Estate by esteemed roaster George Howell. It's sold and labelled as a light roast, right in the middle of the light range. It is clearly a solid medium in colour, flavour, and bean hardness. Who am I now, to argue with George, but, here's the kicker, it tastes like a medium roast, that is to say, chocolatey-burnt. Not ruined exactly… well, a little bit ruined. I can see these beans being to somebody's taste, but any delicate flavours they might have had, those are lost to the burning, and to call them "lightly roasted," that's just wrong.
I was ready to write this off as a miscommunication or something, but next I opened a bag of Fogbuster "Blonde Bombshell" so light, you won't believe how light this is, but brace yourself for an explosion of flavor. I'm just reading the label, here. I have never before personally handled a bean as dark as this one. They are dark. Caliginous. Stygian. Oily dark. Toss 'em in the waste heap dark, because I don't want to have to clean my grinder from the oleaginous coating these poor, distressed beans have had forced upon them.
More than that, these beans are even darker on the inside. Fogbuster somehow injected more dark in the innards, after making the outards dark and shiny like I don't even want to touch. What these things must taste like; I'm not even curious.
A serious question then: what constitutes a light roast in Boston? Did I just get twice unlucky?
I probably had some kopi luwak, twenty years ago, in a restaurant. James Hoffmann explains why I say I probably drank some. Even twenty years ago, ("someone told James that") four times as much KL was sold than was produced. Hoffmann also suggests that it would be better for you to eat and process your own green coffee in the same way that civets do. That way you aren't contributing to animal cruelty, and you can be certain that you're really drinking coffee that has actually been pooped.
My memory of the kopi luwak is, that it was unusually smooth and gentle. It was a fine cup of coffee, supremely inoffensive, perhaps a little boring. Compressing the flavour experience that is coffee into a one-dimensional line for easy comparison, the probably kopi luwak I tried was, I don't know, mid-range. Very drinkable. Beats diner coffee. Doesn't hold a candle to most well-made specialty coffee.