As far as I know, roasting the beans produces the flavors, so how do companies like Starbucks ensure every batch of beans they roast produces “Verona” and another batch produces “Pike Place”? Do they add flavorings? Different bean sources? Roasting process factors?
It just blows my mind that Starbucks, Dunkin, McDonalds, etc. can all produce such different coffee from the (same?) coffee beans.
In: Chemistry
The more you roast the beans, the more uniform and consistent the profile becomes, but you sacrifice more and more of the identity of the bean. All the biggest brands all taste the same because they do the same thing to the same end – they buy and blend the cheapest beans they can get and roast it all to hell until it all tastes the same. It’s the only way they can distribute that much product with a consistent profile every cup.
The Starbucks examples you cite are both blends, though their origins are different, which is the biggest contributor how you could have any hope of telling them apart. Verona is also supposed to be 20% Italian roast – the only thing darker than that is charcoal.
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