Roasting Degrees

This (Sweet Maria's) photo shows very well the different degrees in roasting.
Almost all over the world we see coffee that's roasted too dark.

We always curse on those companies that roast very dark. In Belgium we see most of the artisanal roasters roast 12 for filter and 13 for espresso. Italian coffee is in between 13 and 15.
We roast 9 or 10 -full city - for filter and 11 - city+ - for espresso and an occasional 12 depending on bean/equiment/purpose (for example at the Belgian Barista Championship, on a Dalla Corte, we go for a 12).

A roast thats too dark looses of course a lot of flavors. When you roast espresso on, for example, 14 you may be sure more than half of your flavors are already gone through the chimney.
This saying; I don't think it's because of not knowing that lots of coffee in our country is roasted that way; it's because this masks the old, woody, cheap - very often robusta - coffee.