In order for the beans to brew good coffee, they must “crack” once, and sometimes twice. It is often easy to identify roast by looking at when in the cracking process it was removed from the heat. Mild and medium-bodied roasts, such city, full city, and Vienna, are done somewhere after the first crack but before the second. French roast, on the other hand, is not done until well after the second crack — often mere minutes away from burning up. There is no “third crack” in coffee roasting.
As a result, French roast beans are often very dark, often black looking. Many roasters are hesitant to subject their best quality beans to this process, as little of the bean’s original flavor makes it through such an intensive roast process. It is not uncommon to discover that many French roasts are actually made from somewhat inferior beans — and may actually be a composite of several different bean varieties. Bean consistency rarely impacts the flavor of this style of bean, which is usually made or destroyed on roasting process alone.