I’m standing at my kitchen counter, having just brewed some awesome coffee, roasted very lightly, by my friends in the USA. I’ve just googled "Australia's Lightest Coffee Roaster". I’ve come across a reddit thread that says "Australia doesn't have any Nordic style, or ultralight coffee roasters”. Its a true story (almost), which is surprising to say the least.
I’ve been down this road before, having moved to Australia in 2021. I was bringing all my obsessions over light roasted coffee with me. It was surprising for me to find out that the home of the Flat White, one of the most famous coffee centric nations on earth, did not have anyone roasting coffee as light as I wanted. And here I am 5 years later, still looking at this same google search to see if the landscape has changed. Even though there are hundreds of Australian roasters, it really hasn’t.
If you’ve considered yourself a coffee nerd, then no doubt you have come across this term "Nordic Style". It's become synonymous with lighter roasting styles, often aimed at filter brewing. I am just an old coffee head, who spends way too much time obsessing over little things like this, but it seems to me that this "Nordic Style" has become kind of obscured over the years. Kim says that writing a blog would be good for our website. So - I'd just like to compile some thoughts about where this term came from, and see if I can deduce any application to the roasters using this term today.
In the 2010s there were a few coffee roasters in Norway and Denmark that were making an effort to source coffee direct from farmers, paving the way with Direct Trade and influencing others to put more value into the green coffee, paying higher prices and committing to lifelong buying relationships with these farms. These roasters, such as Tim Wendelboe and Coffee Collective, were then roasting this coffee much lighter than their peers at this time. I feel like this was driven partially by the consumption of more filter style coffee in these regions. Also, by the quality of the green coffee being higher, through efforts to improve processing and agricultural practices. Tim Wendelboe was one of the first people I ever heard about vacuum packing coffee, and storing it in a cold room for better preservation. Although I doubt he was the first, its just a good example of the Nordic roasters bering vocal about methods to improve quality.
These factors, combined with things like World Barista Championship wins, turned these specific roasters into an huge influences for the industry, and placed them into the hearts of coffee nerds around the world. With an uncompromising approach to quality, this style of coffee didn’t benefit from extra roasting, usually there to hide defects. It was simply the best ingredients, treated with the attention they deserved, and this pioneered a new style of beverage. Intentionally tea-like black coffee, with balance and acidity.
As I learned more about coffee, I wondered if "Nordic Style" was an actual roast profile, something such as a "flat inlet" or an "isothermal" approach. I have asked some of my peers on the internet, but we agree its not really applicable in this way. I believe currently ”Nordic" coffee is associated with the plethora of fantastic roasters from the Scandinavian region. All these roasters would have their own style and roast coffee differently, so we can rule out that “Nordic Style” is an approach to heat transfer. Though, the style does generally lean into being high acidity, so you can assume these are speedy roasts, with low-ish development time.
In 2026 we now have this kind of blanket term being used by roasters and cafes all over the world. I believe "Nordic Style" is generally meant to mean light roasts, and it applies to places that want to market to coffee enthusiasts. A beacon of hope for those of us who travel, and want to experience something other than a roasty shot of espresso with steamed milk.
"Roasty" is a term that gets thrown around, similar to my personal favorite - "coal". In my experience, this refers to a flavor achieved when you attempt to develop the center of the coffee bean to be a uniform color with the exterior. In order to do this, one must subject the coffee to a sort-of extended roasting process. The coffee industry has endless books and blog posts about this. "Even" development is something that coffee roasters have been striving towards for years. Generally, these coffees will be more soluble, and might have a high degree of Maillard flavor. This level of development allows them to brew easily, giving up their dissolvable compounds without much effort. In my experience, chasing evenness and solubility often creates a “roasty” note. Ashy or acrid aromas, ones that usually become more apparent as the coffee cools. Coffee doesn’t have to be burnt to be even slightly overcooked on the outside, and this is something that can happen easily if you’re chasing a uniform color.
It's interesting to note that as the industry has progressed, roasts have gotten lighter and lighter. Easier access to state-of-the-art brewing equipment within the last 5 -10 years means that more and more people at home can brew high quality, lightly roasted coffee easily. Unfortunately, this also highlights any "roasty" notes, or other off flavors, that were normally hidden by bad brewing. Coffee is becoming more transparent and customers have more options than ever. Anecdotally, I believe if you buy coffee from an OG Nordic coffee roaster in 2026, you may find that the coffee is actually much more developed than you remembered. It could be attributed to the success of certain roasters. Scaling a roasting company usually involves going darker. This is generally a way to please a larger crowd. Because coffee that’s darker, usually has a higher perceived strength.
It's not uncommon for a person who's been drinking darker roasted coffee their entire life to be handed an identically-strength brew of a lighter roast, and consider it "weaker". Strength refers to the total dissolved solids that make it from the roasted coffee into your cup. The higher the TDS, the higher the strength. Extraction yields could be the same between a light roast and a medium roast, but the more developed coffee might come across as "stronger". For a person who likes filter style coffee and generally likes the vibes of "Nordic Style" coffee, you will most likely be a home enthusiast or barista. If you have the tools and ambition, you can extract really light roasted coffee to a very high strength.
Level-ups in equipment and enthusiasm have led us to previously uncharted territory (unless you want to include some Saudi styles of roast). This style has colloquially taken the futuristic title "Ultra-light" coffee. This is a brand new space, one that I've been following closely over the last 3–4 years. Who coined this term for the roasting style? Perhaps Stéphane from The Picky Chemist, or Coulter at H&S, were the first to use this branding? Regardless of where this nomenclature came from, it's become a thing, and you'll see it adorning slick websites and coffee bags in your local cafe soon.
"Nordic Style" and "Ultra-light" style coffees, I believe, share the same goals at the core. Seeking out the best raw material, and harnessing the transformation of roasting as a vehicle to communicate the true flavours of the green coffee. The vision is: "Don't add anything unnecessary” - going through the least amount of damage possible to transform the green coffee seed into a great cup of coffee. Roasting super light has the opposite set of problems that come with even development, and that is - you guessed it - uneven development! Underdeveloping a coffee is a flaw in the same way that overdeveloping is a flaw. This stems from roasting super fast, and trying to get the coffee through first crack in a blazing amount of time. This can come out as grainy, wheat, might taste like oats or even peanuts.
Its a fine line to get to the flavors you want with coffee roasting. The thing is, all tastes are valid. Everyone has a preference. Every roaster has a style. If you like coffee that's more developed, then there is a roaster out there for you, guaranteed. For those of us who like the lighter side of coffee, this teetering edge of "over" or "under" becomes a lot harder to parse. Take a classic "Nordic Style" coffee for example - this may appear over-developed next to an “ultralight” roast. Or vice versa, depending how much Scott Rao you read.
The reason I've decided to sit here and collect these thoughts today is because I live and roast coffee in a country that is, for the most part, oblivious to these lighter styles. Australia is an espresso-first country. La Marzoccos and steam wands as far as the eye can see. Even Hungry Jack's has a Puqpress — something my humble American "gas-station batch-brew" brain cannot comprehend. This country likes to roast coffee darker, and most of the roasters call it “Omni”, but I feel this style might have a lot in common with “Nordic” even though one is synonymous with lighter styles.
Omni-roasting is something that's ubiquitous in the specialty scene in Australia. There are hundreds of coffee roasters, and so many of them use this as a label for their style. It is kind of a hilarious term to me, because it implies the exclusion of a certain brewing method is determined by roast level. It should be common sense to a barista or home brewer that you can, in fact, use whatever coffee you want for whatever brewing method you desire. The general idea behind omni roasting is that it's developed enough for espresso extraction, but not so developed as to be undesirable in a filter context.
This is a marketing tactic used to mitigate loss for roasters. Cafes and wholesale customers brewing mainly for milk will order order you espresso roast. So if you have to fire up the roaster for one bag of filter roast, it becomes a struggle to sell the rest of the batch. Omni-roasting communicates that this roast can be brewed whichever way you want. In my experience, these are almost always suffering in the filter method. Ultra-light roast coffees, however, can make great espresso if you have the tools, though the lighter the roast, the less body and viscosity. Which may be looked at as a negative in the espresso department.
Most coffee drinkers in this country do not focus on filter coffee. Nearly every home enthusiast you meet will have an espresso machine. There's a huge barista culture that drives espresso into the spotlight. If you're working in the city, there are no doubt dozens of local cafes near your office, and its much faster to get a Flat White or a milk drink than it is to order a batch brew, from a pot of coffee that’s been sitting there for who knows how long, and then have wait for it to cool down. This is not an Australia centric problem, but I do think the culture hear is mostly espresso and milk based. This creates an environment where roasting darker is the name of the game. Filter coffee gets put on the back burner, and batch brews are normally made with the same roasts as the espresso. I was a barista in America, and that is even more horrifying. I worked at one of the biggest specialty coffee roasters in my entire state, and the most important thing on our coffee bar was the syrups. So, in that sense, Australia is certainly embracing actual coffee flavor, and hopefully will develop a taste for lighter roasts in the future.
So, what is "Nordic Style" coffee? I think it's a term of endearment, coined many years ago. Utilised today to signal lighter roasts and a focus on quality. Its vagueness and ambiguity make it great marketing, and for the consumer it's become a tool to identify whether a given roaster is going to provide the type of coffee you're looking for. I actually believe that these"Nordic Style" roasts is what has evolved into the “Omni” style that we see today. The objective is to roast coffee that can go into any machine and still come out with an enjoyable result for the end user.
We started this coffee roastery with the intention of finding the best green coffee we could in Australia, and roasting it light enough that even my snobby-self would be happy with it. Is Anamorphic “Nordic Style”? I think that is up to you, I don’t really feel like that fits us, but our “Omni” style roasts might fit the bill. Are we “Ultra-Light”? Maybe. I’m definitely trying to explore the bleeding edge of development in our coffees, but like all things its a work in progress. All these things are based in personal preference and the references vary greatly. In the end, the goal is to make something that we enjoy and share it with the world.
Anyway, if you’ve read this whole rant, let me know. Have you tried "Nordic style" or "Ultra-light" coffee before? If you've been searching for it in Australia but have been swayed to buy your filter roasts from another country - give us a shout. We are always trying to improve and offer coffees free of roast flavors, that are easy to extract and deliver the intention of the coffee’s producer.