Ask the Coffee Roaster

Is it really true that the darker the roast, the more caffeine the coffee has?
This is a very common misconception. In the roasting process a very small amount of caffeine is burned off. But the difference in caffeine content between a light roast and a dark roast is only about 4%, which in the scheme of things is fairly negligible.The major reason for this misunderstanding is that while roasting, the beans continually expand, making dark roasted beans significantly larger than light roast. This means a person measuring out their beans by scoops would find that one scoop of light roast contains significantly more caffeine than dark roast.

What exactly is espresso?
This is an excellent question. Many people are under the impression that espresso is a drink that is made from very dark roasted coffee bean, but it is not. Espresso is a process, in which 190 degree water is forced through 7 grams of finely ground coffee under approximately 9 atmospheres of pressure for about 25 seconds. Any roast of coffee can be used in making espresso.

So exactly where does coffee come from?
Biologically, coffea arabica, or Arabica coffee, is native to southwestern Ethiopia and eastern South Sudan. The first real evidence of cultivation and brewing took place during the mid-15th century at Sufi monasteries on the southern Arabian peninsula in what is now modern day Yemen.

I don’t have a coffee grinder in my home. Is there a difference in shelf life of whole beans versus ground coffee?
There is a huge difference! The average shelf life of beans is 2-3 weeks. But because ground coffee has thousands of times the surface area as beans, oxidation limits the shelf life of ground coffee to about 15 minutes!