/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8614463

All that only applies to burned coffee. Dark roast =/= burned by default, just lots of people sell you burned and call it "dark roast". The color on a bean comes from the maillard reaction, which if I recall correctly happens between 325 and 360 degrees farenheit. This is why so many recipes for the oven call for "350 f for x hours", it exposes the skin of a food to the right temperature range and browns without having to sear.

The chemicals released during maillard are not harmfil, in fact many are beneficial to you. Most of the flavor extracts we use also come from taking the byproduct of maillard on different foods and playing with it in labs.

A true dark roast might be hard to find for the simple fact that it is expensive. To get one, you need to hold coffee at the right temp for a long time, and the bean gets gradually more brown until it is "dark", which is subjective but usually means 3/4 of the way from brown to black. This will release very deep and actually very mild flavors, and the caffeine will be the least of any blend (maillarding breaks down caffeine, the strongest coffee would be the bitter raw green bean).

Pic related is a lovely true dark roast, do recommend for drip, press, pourover, or brew. It literally does almost taste like chocolate.