Sideyard Coffee: November 4 - Rwanda 🇷🇼 Dry Process + Caffeine Myths
Hello Sideyard Friends,
This week's coffee is a Rwanda dry process, roasted to the darker side of medium. It should delight dry process fans in particular. I'm tasting dark chocolate roast tones, followed by dried fruits, and a brighter berry note like blackberry or blueberry.
I was reminded recently of a caffeine in coffee myth that I once subscribed to. It goes something like this... the lighter the roast, the less caffeine is roasted out of the beans. The opposite myth is also common, but didn't catch on in my brain... the darker the bean, the more caffeine. Turns out neither is true. This recent literature review 🤓, finds that caffeine content is largely unaffected by roast level, water pressure, and a number of other variables.
There's one kinda cool caveat with roast level, however. If you measure your beans by weight, you'll get a few more beans with a dark roast than a light roast because darker roasted beans have less water weight. On the other hand, if you measure by volume, you'll have a free more light roast beans in your scoop because they expand less in the roaster. In either case, we're talking about a couple beans per cup of coffee, which does not ultimately translate into the feel of consuming more or less caffeine. Coffee species seem to have the largest impact on caffeine content by far, with varieties amongst species coming in second. Robusta, which doesn't show up much in the speciality coffee world (I've never roasted one personally) has up to 50% more caffeine than Arabica.
Whereas there's plenty of good (and bad) info online about caffeine in coffee, there's very little to be found about this week's origin track recommendation: Rossisendi & His Group - Ururabo (1976).
Cheers,
Ryan
p.s. We have a couple of spare 12oz bags from this week's roast available on the site.