Lecture Description

Coffee consumers care more about roast color than any other attribute when choosing a coffee to purchase, but there is tremendous confusion – including among roasters in the coffee industry – about what precisely a “dark roast,” “medium roast,” or “light roast” actually means. A “light roast” for one roaster might be darker than a “dark roast” for a different roaster. To address this challenge, the SCA would like to establish an index of roast colors with plain English names and relate this to a CIELAB (L*a*b*) uniform color scales to help bring consistency to the marketplace. This lecture will draw on preliminary results from a massive study at the UC Davis Coffee Center investigating the impact of roast profile inside a commercial drum roaster and connect this ongoing research with survey data to help inform the Specialty Coffee Association's project to develop a roast color standard in 2024.

Date: Friday, April 12, 2024
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Room Number: 426AB

Speakers

William Ristenpart (he/him)
Professor, University of California Davis

William Ristenpart is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and the founding director of the Coffee Center at the University of California Davis. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and did his postdoctoral research at Harvard University. In 2012, Prof. Ristenpart co-developed a general education class called “The Design of Coffee,” which became the most popular elective general education course on campus and is now taught at several universities around the world. His research expertise is in complex transport phenomena, with current research topics including nanoparticle electrokinetics, airborne disease transmission, and extraction dynamics of coffee.