Coffee Expert Nick Cho Explains Coffee Styles, Roasts, and Why It's Important to Just Drink What You Like

Nick Cho, known on social media as 'Your Korean Dad,' is a respected third-wave coffee connoisseur.

If you spend much time on social media, you might be familiar with the popular Your Korean Dad videos made by Nick Cho. Unbeknownst to most who encounter his videos, Cho has been one of the most visible figures in the third-wave coffee movement over the past two decades.

Though Cho didn’t coin the term himself, he was the first person quoted using the term in an NPR interview in 2005, and throughout his career since then, he has become an evangelist for great coffee.

At this year’s Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, Cho is hosting a seminar on coffee in partnership with Serious Eats, called “Not Your Average Cup of Joe — The Art of Coffee.” Part of the program will be to let the attendees taste coffee roasted to three different levels; dark roast, medium roast, and light roast. “The greatest and most impactful experience is tasting a few different coffees side-by-side,” says Cho. “Most people don’t do that. It’s not a thing that happens often in the real world.”

Related: What Is the Difference Between Light Roast and Dark Roast Coffee?

“With coffee, there are natural sugars, acids, and compounds that exist in the green coffee,” he continues. “When we roast it and brew it, what we’re really trying to do is develop these things to where there’s a really nice balance and complexity.”

Beyond illuminating the effect the roasting process has on coffee, this exercise is meant to provide a glimpse into the history and changing philosophies at play in the specialty coffee community.

What is third-wave coffee?

The third-wave coffee movement has been the dominant ideology among high-end cafes for roughly the past two decades. Typified by a more culinary, careful approach to making coffee, the term is best understood when contrasted with the eras that came before it.

First-wave coffee can be understood as a broad understanding that coffee was a functional beverage, essentially a caffeine delivery system. Think of cans of pre-ground Folgers or Maxwell House or run-of-the-mill diner coffee. There was generally little regard for freshness, roast level, or the provenance of the beans.

“It was about consuming coffee,” says Cho. “It didn’t have to taste good, you put sugar or cream in it if you wanted it to taste less bad, but people pretty much liked how it was.”

The second wave crested in the 1990s with the rise of Starbucks and the proliferation of coffee shops throughout the United States that followed.

“Second wave was about enjoying coffee,” says Cho. “It’s not good enough that it’s just caffeine delivery, I want it to taste yummy. I want a cappuccino or a caramel macchiato. I want it to taste good to me.”

A big shift in the second wave was the introduction of dark roast coffee.

"“Third wave is about coffee appreciation. Like wine appreciation or music appreciation, it’s about a connoisseurship or the idea that educating yourself about it actually adds value to the experience.” — Nick Cho, coffee expert, co-founder of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters"

“Dark roast took the world by storm through the ’90's,” says Cho. “Coffee was unremarkable and kind of flat. Dark roast gave it this punch that nobody had ever experienced before.” Sometimes referred to as French or Italian roast, a dark roast broadly refers to coffee that is roasted for a longer period, giving the beans a blackened hue with an oily veneer.

This style went hand-in-hand with the way coffee was cultivated and imported at the time. Huge lots from multiple farms and regions were often mixed together and there was still little thought given to the provenance of the beans. Roasting coffee for so long has a flattening effect that mutes the terroir and individual characteristics of a given coffee, but at the same time improves the overall consistency.

By the time NPR interviewed Cho in 2005, the third wave was beginning to take hold.

“Third wave is about coffee appreciation,” says Cho. “Like wine appreciation or music appreciation, it’s about a connoisseurship or the idea that educating yourself about it actually adds value to the experience.”

The biggest advancement of the third wave was the idea that terroir existed in coffee. Where a coffee was grown, who grew it, how it was cultivated, how it was processed — all of these details has profound effects on how a coffee tastes. During the third wave, roasters and baristas started to highlight the differences between specific farms and producers, leading to the advent of single-origin coffees.

“For them, it wasn’t really about marketing,” says Cho. “It was about ‘I want to know the truth about this coffee, I want to know the truth about what it tastes like, [and] I want importers and distributors to get out of the way.’”

This growing focus on coffee’s terroir led to a shift in roasting as well. “A really light roast is focused on highlighting the unique qualities of that coffee,” says Cho. “Particularly the acidity, giving it an almost citrus juice quality.”

Lightly roasting coffee cuts down on the toasted, chocolatey flavor and aromas to focus on the coffee’s natural, bright, fruity notes and appreciating a coffee for what it is rather than mixing it with syrups, cream, and/or freezing it. According to Cho, it’s about enjoying coffee in its most natural form.

Inviting the consumers in

Many of the people involved in the third-wave movement see themselves and their craft in direct opposition to the still-mainstream trends of the second wave. “It’s easier to swing the pendulum all the way to the opposite side of Starbucks rather than taking time to master your craft,” says Cho. “Rather than seeing yourselves as the opposite of Starbucks, figure out what it is that people really want from their coffee and look at that as an opportunity.”

Many adherents to the third-wave philosophy naturally have come to see their practices, the focus and emphasis on origin, and the concept of roasters and baristas as craftspeople, as the ultimate or “correct” way to enjoy coffee.

“This was very much driven from the coffee people’s side, It wasn’t so much about what the average consumer wants,” says Cho. “You can tell people ‘Hey, this is great,’ and they just shrug and say ‘Okay, if you say so.’ That’s kind of what we’ve done collectively.”

"“Coffee is hard. It’s not necessarily easy to navigate. You have a little work to do to discover a coffee that you really like. You shouldn’t just take people's word for it because it’s a trendy cafe or this is the way people are talking about coffee now.” — Nick Cho, coffee expert, co-founder of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters"

Cho sees the goldilocks-like balance of the medium roast profile as a way to honor the advances made by the third-wave movement while presenting customers with a coffee that’s not too extreme. “You want to have those unique qualities and taste of origin be present, but that’s not your only objective,” he says. “You want to give them an overall pleasant experience.”

A medium roast still caramelizes the natural sugars present in the coffee beans, without burning off what makes the coffee taste unique.

“It’s my contention that if you maximize sweetness and keep the other things present and in balance, that’s your best bet. That’s my ideal of what most people would consider a medium roast,” says Cho.

Ultimately, Cho wants to push back a bit on some of the dogmas and strictures of the third-wave movement.

“Coffee is hard. It’s not necessarily easy to navigate,” he says. “You have a little work to do to discover a coffee that you really like. You shouldn’t just take people's word for it because it’s a trendy cafe or this is the way people are talking about coffee now.”

Coffee consumers are doing their best to understand what’s going on with coffee and to understand where they can find a place in this constantly changing world. Cho wants to encourage them to continue exploring while still validating people’s personal preferences.

“I don’t remember the name, but there was this old podcast about wine I used to listen to,” says Cho. “His little tagline at the end of each episode was ‘Drink what you like and keep trying new things.’ That little phrase, what a beautiful little two-part sentence.”

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