I recently stayed at an organic coffee plantation in Costa Rica and was educated on the nuances of coffee. Starbucks tells its roasters to roast the beans more than what is optimal. The reason is heat expands so a larger bean is the result which means more grind and therefore higher yields/profits per bean. The upshot of this is that Starbucks coffee is bitter and requires sugars and creams - hence all of the flavour concoctions they sell.

Their blonde roast is the only roast they sell that comes from beans roasted optimally.

Other interesting things I learned:

- coffee beans are actually the pits of a cherry plant

- the higher the bean is grown from sea level, the better the quality

- good beans roasted properly create a coffee that is naturally sweet requiring no additional flavours or creams and tastes great just black

- Ily, the Italian coffee brand, sells one of the highest quality coffee grinds you can get from a supermarket

- coffee commodity prices are cyclical and producers will hold back or flood the market depending on the commodity price. As a result, you can time which beans will be fresh and which ones will be stale because they were held back during low price periods