We Won’t Do Dark Roasts

We don’t do a single darkly roasted coffee at Farmers Union. Not for us, not for a wholesale account, not for anyone. Want to know why?

The first thing that might be surprising is that coffee has more chemical complexity than wine.  We love wine but coffee contains so much more. That’s why we put so much work into sourcing, roasting, and ultimately sharing all of those flavors with you.

Roasting darkly brings out roasted notes, and diminishes or eliminates all of the prized flavors that a producer worked for a whole season to develop.  It makes all coffee taste the same.  You miss out on a whole world of nuance!

Other coffee companies may use dark roasts to mask the flavors of low quality coffee.  It’s easy to obscure poor quality product with a dark roast profile. It’s simply not possible to hide defects like mold and insect damage with a light roast.

Even Roast Magazine featured a lightly roasted coffee from a familiar roaster on their cover.  That’s us on there.  You could say we’re in good company.

Roasting lightly allows us to highlight all of the wonderful flavors locked in the green coffee- flavors that were created over a whole season of careful growing, picking, and processing.  Flavors like watermelon, raspberry, vanilla, orange blossom, caramel, dark chocolate, hazelnut, and many hundreds more waiting to be unleashed.

Questions? We’re happy to help!

Thanks for sticking with us to the end. If you have any thoughts, just leave a comment and we will get back to you in a timely manner.