Coffee beans from green to dark

Below is a rough guide to what coffee looks like at various stages of roasting. All the beans are from the Nyeri Hill estate in Kenya and were roasted on my Whirley Pop.

Here's how coffee beans look at various stages of roasting

Green beans

Coffee in its raw state. (Don't drink it like this.)

(Jason Song / Los Angeles Times)

Light roast

Beans roasted just to first crack, when they began to pop from the heat. This batch tasted too much like breakfast cereal, so I re-roasted it again later. Note that much of the coffee skin remains on the bean.

(Jason Song / Los Angeles Times)

Medium roast

A lighter medium roast. More beans are shedding their skin, which can be removed after coffee is removed from heat. Beans still look dry. This was the most popular roast among Times taste testers.

(Jason Song/ Los Angeles Times)

Dark roast

Re-roasted the light beans to a dark roast for espresso. With a Whirley Pop, which uses direct heat, not all the beans will be cooked to the same temperature, hence some look darker than others. Note that the darker beans are shiny because the coffee oils are starting to come to the surface.

(Jason Song/ Los Angeles Times)

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