Some coffee roasters use names for the various degrees of roast, such as "city roast" and "French roast", for the internal bean temperatures found during roasting. Recipes known as "roast profiles" indicate how to achieve flavor characteristics. Any number of factors may help a person determine the best profile to use, such as the coffee's origin, variety, processing method, moisture content, bean density, or desired flavor characteristics. A roast profile can be presented as a graph showing time on one axis and temperature on the other, which can be recorded manually or using computer software and data loggers linked to temperature probes inside various parts of the roaster.

The most popular, but probably the least accurate, method of determining the degree of roast is to judge the bean's color by eye (the exception to this is using a spectrophotometer to measure the ground coffee reflectance under infrared light and comparing it to standards such as the Agtron scale). As the coffee absorbs heat, the color shifts to yellow and then to increasingly darker shades of brown. During the later stages of roasting, oils appear on the surface of the bean. The roast will continue to darken until it is removed from the heat source. Coffee also darkens as it ages, making color alone a poor roast determinant. Most roasters use a combination of temperature, smell, color, and sound to monitor the roasting process.