[jcla1]

> I typically do a medium roast with no oily sheen to them and it serves me well.

I thought an oily/shiny appearance of coffee beans was due to them being roasted too long ago and then some of the coffee bean oils "leaking" out of the beans. Is this not the case, i.e. something that might even be controllable with the roasting process, even something desirable in some cases?

[barrkel]

The appearance of oil on the surface comes from roasting beans to the second crack:

https://mtpak.coffee/coffee-roasting-basics-guide-to-first-s...

Oily beans are dark roasted and have a different flavour profile. If you get cheap supermarket espresso beans, they're usually roasted to this point. I think it gives a more consistent product given input variability, varietal differences are no longer so apparent.

[ajmurmann]

I've only been roasting for a few months but the correlation seems to be with how dark you roast not with how long ago the roast happened. I roasted some beans a little over a week ago and they were covered in lots of oil one or two days later.

[nkozyra]

I don't find much support for it in the coffee snob community, but everyone has their own preferences.