LogFAQs > #976205807

Waxitron_Gazer posted...

that one's easy, they're a massive corp and they want their shit to be consistent. one way to ensure consistency with coffee is just to burn the shit out of all of it so the primary character is roast. can't tell the difference between origin profile if it all tastes like charcoal.

Yeah, they've said almost as much.
If you'd like to hear Howard Schultz fart about it: https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2018/celebrating-10-years-of-starbucks-pike-place-roast1/

In 2007, the Starbucks coffee team hatched a plan to reimagine brewed coffee. Back then Starbucks rotated all its brewed coffees weekly or even daily, with offerings varying from one store to the next. A tall drip coffee at one Starbucks store could be a floral, lemony Ethiopia Sidamo, while across town it was a spicy Guatemala Antigua. At the same time, some customers perceived Starbucks signature roast as burnt. The team set out to create their first coffee specifically developed for drip brewing, rather than a coffee press or espresso, one with an approachable balance of flavor and acidity when served black or with cream and sugar. They kept their project secret, even from Starbucks senior leaders. The code name: Consistent Brew.
The coffee team realized that it was something beyond a recipe, we would have to roast it differently to a make completely different flavor, said Brad Anderson, a 27-year partner and master roaster. It took a lot of testing, experimentation and exploration to figure out a roast curve that would achieve all that flavor without the roasty intonations.
Roasting coffee is an artform a delicate dance of temperature and time. After two months of testing, tasting and trying, the team created a new roast curve for Consistent Brew with a shape that climbs more steeply than the signature curve before flattening out as the beans are released in the cooling tray.
With the new roast, we softened the edges a little bit, said Linnemann. You get the full aroma but the smoky roasty bite is not so overwhelming,