Coffee roasting is one of the most important factors for making good espresso; it effects not only the taste, but the color, smell, and level of caffeine.

There are several kinds of coffee roasting:

“Cinnamon”
Light with a brown shade, this kind of roasting isn’t used very often because it’s very light and therefore doesn’t have a high amount of caffeine. It does have an excellent smell, however (like fresh braked bread)!

“Light”
Beans used here have a light brown color, and have a slick, rather than an oily, surface. This kind of roasting is also known as “continental”.

“Medium”
The beans used for Medium roasting have a brown color similar to chestnuts. The surface for the Medium beans have almost no oil whatsoever; at most you’ll see a few single oily dots on them.

“City of Viennas”
This kind of bean has a small amount of oil on the surface.

“Full city or Seattles”
Beans used for this kind of roasting have a dark brown color (sometimes with a reddish shade), with only a moderate amount of oil.

“Dark”
Almost completely black, and very oily.

“Italian”
Very oily and black. This type of roasting is especially popular in Northern Italy.

“French”
Very dark with a reddish color and a lot of oil. It’s one of the darkest beans used for roasting.

Oily or burnt beans.

People think that darker beans have more caffeine, but in reality it’s the opposite. The darker the beans are roasted, the less caffeine they have.

Also, a lot of people think that the amount of oil depends on the grade of roasting, but this isn’t true. After roasting, coffee has to be cooled down. If this step is skipped, the beans will simply burn.
Sometimes you can make Italian beans slightly burnt. This is done by making the cooling last slightly longer after roasting (this is how it’s usually done in Southern Italy).

The amount of oil depends on how fast the beans are cooled; this controls how much oil accumalates on the surface of the beans. In order to get oil the cooling has to be done fast. Usually nobody cools down beans *too* fast because the oil and aroma can be near completely lost.