I just received a shipment of green beans. One of the beans was Ugandan. Just before roasting it in the Hottop I looked at it closely and it looked more like a peaberry than the Ugandan I'm used to seeing with quite a mix between dark brown to light green beans.
On roasting I ramped slowly to a usual first crack. After about a couple minutes nothing but a few light 1st pops. No discernable rolling 1st stage. I decided to push from there and cranked to max and after about 3 minutes got a rolling 2nd with more smoke than I usually get. After lingering in rolling 2nd for about a minute I stopped the roast. It was dark with a sheen and scattered spots of oil showing. Very high chaff and quite a bit of lost mass. Hard to tell if the roast got stalled or what was up.
After jarring the roast I decided to extract a double right away. Lots of crema. Grind set for a slight ristretto got me a pretty quick, long coned naked pf normale. Crema settled out quickly.
The taste was better than I expected. A bit flat but nice tang and a lingering nutty finish with a somewhat buttery mouthfeel. Very quickly got a caffeine buzz, which is strange from just one double shot.
I looked more closely at the invoice and it turns out this Ugandan is a screened Robusta. Go figure. Accounts for the small peaberry looking beans, inconsistent colour and caffeine buzz.
What I'm not sure about is the roasting. Does Robusta roast differently than Arabica? Is 1st crack with a Robusta hard to hear or come at a higher temp, lower temp or same temp than with an Arabica? Does Robusta need to be roasted with a different profile than the average Arabica? I'm trying to figure out if it was my profile or the bean that accounted for the strange 1st crack.
