Hercule Poirot investigates the curious case of coffee colours:

Looks like many...grinds like one!

Mesdames et Messieurs... we would have no doubt noticed that a bag of coffee, when roasted well, looks consistent and even in colour, non? This is true for a single origin... But if one was to gaze down at the label to discover not one origin and process, but several? Then what, Hercule asks you, is going on? Should this be the case?

One might think that a blend with its origins roasted to all the same colour will be more evenly roasted than a blend roasted with its origins of different colours. It may seem a tad counterintuitive at first, but it is in fact sometimes the exact opposite which is the case! Counterintuitive, that is, until we face the irrefutable truth that coffee grinders don't grind by colour.

At first, it would appear true that two of the same things cooked the same way should be the same colour; the trouble is, different origins with different processes are in fact very seldom the same. In actuality, what we find is that colour is purely a reaction to roasting and not necessarily linked to roast degree or density in a meaningful way.

Then who is pulling this puppet's strings? Who is the puppetmaster?

It is none other than density herself!

If we think of our little coffee grinder as a simple cutting tool, then this simplifies things a bit. As a cutting tool, colour does not matter to it one bit. What matters to a grinder is density and, more precisely, evenness of density across the blend to maintain consistent fracture mechanics. If the beans within a blend are not matched by colour but instead matched by density, then to your grinder (and espresso machine), your blend will be cut and extracted as though it was one bean with a single roast degree.

Hercule has done it again! Another case solved with a message that extends far beyond this case alone: it is truly what's on the inside that counts;)

We're always chasing extraction perfection so our origins within our blends shine to their full potential--whether it's our silky, fruity, and floral Prime or our smooth crowd-pleasing choc honeycomb bomb Wayward.