FAQs
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Contrary to what your taste buds tell you, lighter roasts have more caffeine than dark roasts. This is because less coffee has been burned off during the roasting process. That said, all things being equal, a single cup of light roast coffee will not keep you up until 1am if you typically have a single cup of dark roast coffee. The differences are usually negligible.
We try and stay away from the term “strength” when referring to coffee. This term could refer to the robustness of flavor OR the amount of caffeine. So we’ll use other descriptors aside from “strong” to refer to the taste. “Bold” “robust” and “hearty” could all apply to a dark roast.
Which Coffee has the most Caffeine?
Most coffee is organic, with or without the label. However, we found that working with coffee farmers who are able to pay the fee and jump through the hoops in order to become USDA Certified Organic limited us to a small selection of larger farming operations. Small farms can produce some exquisite coffees, and we didn’t want to rule out working with them just because they couldn’t afford the USDA approved fertilizer or certification itself.
Ironically, family owned farming operations typically cannot afford to use pesticides and chemicals that would make it un-organic in the first place.
Organic vs. Inorganic - What’s the dif?
What is Decaf?
JHR has carried coffees that are decaffeinated through two different methods: the Swiss Water Process (SWP) and the Sugarcane Process. Both processes are remarkably similar in that they involve soaking the green coffee in water with natural compounds. These natural compounds bond with the caffeine and remove it from the green coffee. In Swiss Water’s case, the compound is green coffee extract. With the Sugarcane Process, the compound is Ethyl Acetate (EA), a chemical naturally derived from sugarcane. SWP is slightly better at removing coffee with a 99.9% efficiency, while the Sugarcane Process removes about 97% of the caffeine.
Light vs Medium vs Dark
Roast levels vary a lot from roaster to roaster! If you’ve every had a specialty light roast and Starbuck’s Blonde roast, this is a painfully obvious statement.
We define our roasts by temperature. Generally, we drop our light roasts at around 400F, our mediums at around 405-416F, and our darks at or after 430F.
Frankly, terms such as light, medium, and dark are a bit outdated. All coffees behave differently when roasted, so two coffees from different regions are going to behave differently even when roasted at the same temp. Treat these terms as a general directions you can use to point you towards the respective flavor town you’re trying to visit.
Finally, the roaster’s flavor palate and preferences are going to have more effect on the final label than any other factor. One roaster’s dark roast may be another roaster’s medium.