Four guides to roast labels and roasting: what light, medium and dark roast mean, what French roast is, whether Italian or French roast is darker, and how to roast green coffee at home safely, including chaff, smoke and fire risk. If you roast at home, read the safety guide first. If you buy roasted beans, start with roast levels, then French versus Italian roast.
Home roasting has two hazards: chaff, the papery skin that comes off the bean during the roast, which is dry, light and burns; and smoke. The maker of the Hottop roaster puts the fire risk on the front page of its manual.
French roast is a dark roast. It names a roast color, not a bean, a growing region or where the coffee comes from: any coffee can be sold as French …
Italian roast is the darker of the two, but neither name is a standard. On the National Coffee Association’s light-to-dark list French roast is second from the end and Italian …
Coffee roast levels run light, medium and dark by bean color, but the names are not tied to one standard, so where one ends and the next begins depends on …
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