You probably heard of espresso & filter roast, but what are they? This post we get on to everything you want to know about both roasting profile. Let's get started ☕️

Latte & espresso from The Normal, Taipei

Espresso Roast is a roast profile that’s roasted specifically for espresso machine brewing. It’s typically medium & darker roast as compared to filter roast coffee.

Why espresso roast? An espresso only brews with a much shorter brew time (~30secs) with high pressure (9bar). Hence it requires a certain level solubility in coffee bean to fully extract the coffee beans.

Medium & darker roast is preferred as they are more soluble than lighter roast coffees. The darker the roast, the higher the solubility, the easier to extract the coffee beans.

This is especially important for espresso blends that are specially designed to pair with milk! Most espresso blends are on the medium dark roast level that is very soluble and very easy to extract. 

In order not to dilute the milk with long watery espresso, its best to pull a shorter espresso with a 1:1.2 ratio to make a creamy latte. Hence, high solubility medium dark roast coffees is recommended for espresso blends.

Can I brew espresso roast coffee on filter? Absolutely YES!

There you'll get a full bodied & bold cup of coffee, the french press is our favourite way to go with espresso roast coffee.

How about filter roast on espresso? NOT recommended at all.

Lighter roast coffee is not as soluble as darker roast coffees, you’ll notice the flow rate is much faster as the grounds are not soluble into espresso and water just merely passing through it.

As a result, you'll easily end up with an under extracted espresso that tastes extremely sharp & sour. You'll need to pull a long espresso to achieve good extraction & sweetness, not a fan of watery espresso

Filter roast is the roasting profile that’s specifically created to brew with all kinds of filter brewer, ie any brewers that uses a filter to filter off all ground coffee. Hario V60, Chemex, Aeropress, French Press, Syphon, Nel drip are all filter brewers! 

Filter brewers usually take a much longer time to brew (2-3 minutes or more) as compared to espresso (~30 seconds). Hence, easier to extract more flavours in filter brewers and more efficient in terms of extraction.

In general, most filter roast coffees are range from light to medium roast. Of course, there are dark roast coffee like Liberica Classic that is suitable for filter brew too 🙌🏼

All of our roasters only roast single origin coffees for filter roast. The aim is to best preserve the beautiful aromatics of coffee and highlight its unique characteristics! 

It's very common to see light roast African & Central American coffees like Kenya or Panama gesha to exhibit its fruity floral aromatics and flavours. 🍎🍑🌷🌸💐 All the Worlds Best Coffee Beans are light roast coffees!

Whereas Brazilian and Indonesian coffees are usually medium or darker roast for good chocolaty notes & better mouthfeel 😋

As mentioned in previous earlier, we don’t recommend to brew filter roast coffee for espresso, mokapot & cold brew. Espresso roast is preferred for better extraction 😉

Wanna learn more about how to brew the perfect coffee at home? Check this out here.

Happy brewing!