Recently I read that the the traditional preferred roast level in New England was Light Roast or Half City and the "American" roast level was medium as that is the level of roasting most common across the nation. For that matter, the Nordic countries, England, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong all have a long history of roasting coffee lighter, as well as using traditional brewing methods.
Ever since we started talking about the "waves" of coffee-culture, little if an attention has been given to what came before the 1st-wave, as if that wave introduced coffee to the nation. From what I understand, before the two great wars, coffee was roasted by neighborhood coffee roasters and delivered fresh to the door much like milk was. Roasted lighter, delivered freshly roasted, using traditional brewing devices... found familiar?
In my home cities of Milwaukee, in the early 19070s there were a number of specialty "coffee traders" that also roasted fresh in shop and roasted lighter. From the pictures I have seen, they look like Old World shops. Dunn Bros on Grand Ave in St. Paul also has that same European shop feeling to it, as well as other earlier conceived 2nd-wave coffee roasters I have visited around the country. My guess is they got this concept from an older coffee-culture that was present in America before the wars.
Seriously wish I know more about the earlier American Coffee-Culture and that more people were talking about it. Seems to be a forgotten "wave" and I think it deserves some attention.
Not sure that the so called "3rd-wave" is anything new or invented by those on the west-coast, it may rather be in someways a return to what the coffee-culture was before the the wars, as well as joining the roast level and brewing habits of those in other coffee-cultures around the world. We should not be so foolish or proud to think we are the first ones to come up with this coffee-culture.
... just my random thoughts...
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