Measuring roast colour is important. The type of roast - light, medium or dark - has a definite bearing on quality.
Different markets roast coffee differently. Exporters should understand the type of roast their buyers need. But 'light, medium and dark' mean different things to different people: they are subjective terms. See also also 12.09.01 on roast and 12.09.04 on tasting - traditional versus espresso.The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) has developed a points system to classify the degree - the colour - of different roast types. The system consists of eight numbered colour disks against which one matches a sample of finely ground, roasted coffee, usually pressed into a laboratory petri dish. In this way one assigns the roast an approximate number on what is commonly called the Agtron Gourmet Scale, ranging from #95 (lightest roast) at intervals of 10 down to #25 (the darkest common roast).This helpful tool enables producers and roasters to speak the same language when discussing 'the roast' of a coffee. (It is available from the SCAA's resource centre in Long Beach, California - see www.scaa.org.)