I've been roasting coffee for a couple years now and learned a lot in the process and my tastes changed. I used to drink mostly straight espresso shots, but these days I'm more likely to make an Americano or if time, a pour over or use an Aeropress which is the all out fastest way to make a great cup. While I still like dark coffee and shots if it is done well, very little is, and finding something other than a dark roast is like trying to find something other than an IPA at a tap house these days. People today are conditioned to want dark coffee as if it were a competition. Today's brew is better than the shelf robusta crap we were fed for so long, so that's what we want. Truth is, dark roasts get you roast flavor, and not much else. Now, I like a good roast flavor, but it's a single note coffee. It can be good, but good coffees have an amazing variety of flavor out there and we can do much much better. Ethiopian coffees can be amazing, Kona, Guatamala, Panama, etc. they all have their different tastes. If you drink dark coffee, you won't taste the varietal as it gets roasted out as the bean gets darker. Coffee can have some amazing fruit like and chocolate type flavors you are missing out on. People think that a light roast means a weak brew. Instead, the most flavorful cup of coffee simply can't come from a deep roast level, but the lighter the roast the more quality beans, grind and brewing will matter. Firms like Starbucks offer consistency. Varietal coffee is different, cup to cup, season to season, and it's more expensive. So if your Charbucks, you wisely build a business not around bean quality, which you can neither control, nor can you source enough specialty coffee in the first place, so you instead build a flavor profile that comes not from the bean taste but the roast itself. Consistency demands a dark roast and every big chain roasts this way. Then you can source inexpensive beans of wide ranges of quality. Dark coffee has become such the rage that specialty roasters have a harder time moving the expensive specialty coffee they took more care with than the inexpensive to produce French roast they make a killing on.
Next time you are in a good quality cafe that offers a pour over, give it a try. You might be surprised. You also might wind up ordering your coffee direct from a roaster and wait each season for the next crop of Kona to come in, or that particular Ethiopian that tasted like blueberries. It can get a bit obsessive.
