3rd Annual HB Homeroasters Competition - discussion thread - Page 12

#111: Post by **Andy** » July 15th, 2012, 12:23 pm

Obviously I'm pleased to have done well in Closed Espresso. Just as obvious is that I have a LONG way to go to become a consistently good roaster -- I came in dead last in two other categories and 7th in the other. That leads me to conclude that I owe the success of one of my entries to pure dumb luck. My apologies to all of you REAL espresso roasters.

For the record: 80% Rwanda Jomba Vunga, 20% Java Kopi Sunda. Rwanda roasted 27 seconds into 2nd crack, EOR at 12:27. Java roasted 19 seconds into 2nd crack, EOR at 12:51. Charge is 150 grams in a West Bend Poppery with fan and heater wired separately. I control the roast with the heater switch and monitor with one K-type thermocouple in the roast chamber.

Thanks to Jim, Henry, Sweet Maria's people, entrants and everyone else who put this competition together and made it go.

Andy Thomas

July 15th, 2012, 5:22 pm

The magic of Andy's winning dark roast was dynamic range -- every flavor on the wheel form acids to distillates. As one drinks good coffee for longer and longer periods, the charms of dark caramels wear off, and the charms of acidic and fruited flavors increases. So a simple dark roast, even one without flaws, is going to get short shrift in a competition, since the judges will usually be long time coffee drinkers. But if a dark roast manages to retain all the light flavors, it will be in the hunt.

Doing that requires two almost contradictory things: a fast finish to preserve the flavors, and a low MET to prevent charring.

Andy's open roast had a wide flavor range too, but there was char. Charred tasting roasts on air roasters are a result of the temperature of the air entering from the bottom (which is the MET) being too high. Put a TC right in the grill gaps where the air enters and control the heat to keep it below 480F. That will keep the roast from developing charred flavors.

To get the wide range, you need to finish the roast fast without damaging the beans. When we talked about your roast at judging, it occurred to us that a lot of the profiling advice for medium and light roasts may be wrong for darker roasts. In particular, you probably want lots of moisture and green tastes to remain well into the first crack as a buffer for the coming heat. That means a strongly reduced drying period may be wise. Very slow ramps to the first tend to delay the first crack onset and accelerate the second, that may also be an idea for these roasts.

But instead of me theorizing without facts, it would be more useful for people who like dark roasts to compare their profiling and tasting notes without referring too much to those of lighter roasters.

#113: Post by **tekomino** » July 15th, 2012, 5:49 pm

Thank you Jim and Sherman and everyone else on brewing side for putting the effort in to judge. It takes lot of time and commitment and you are doing it because you love coffee and to support this community. Its appreciated.

My winning open competition was roast of Kenya Nyeri AA Tegu. I knew this one was going to win, seriously, I tried it and I knew it. Its monster coffee. As promised here is the profile for winning roast:

My closed competition blend was also really good but I noticed that it is wildly changing from day to day as I was tasting it and Jim and Sherman caught it on bad day. I was hoping for double win

Very strange behavior, but there it is...

I feel though like I just scratched the surface with regards to roasting. There is still a lot to learn... Just think how Andy (congrats Andy!) won with dark roast and that just shows how wide the spread is for learning. I wish that we continue sharing and share even more on how to roast better and get most out of coffee.

#114: Post by **farmroast** » July 15th, 2012, 6:52 pm

another_jim wrote:...In particular, you probably want lots of moisture and green tastes to remain well into the first crack as a buffer for the coming heat. That means a strongly reduced drying period may be wise.

I have a couple friends who like me to dark roast for them and this is what I do.

July 15th, 2012, 6:55 pm

For me roasting Kenyas for espresso is a 19 miss to 1 hit proposition; and I'm simply not into that level of fine tuning a roast. But when it does hit, it's a monster. Denis deserves congratulations on working with the Tegu till it came out right.

#116: Post by **tekomino** » July 15th, 2012, 7:15 pm

another_jim wrote:For me roasting Kenyas for espresso is a 19 miss to 1 hit proposition; and I'm simply not into that level of fine tuning a roast. But when it does hit, it's a monster. Denis deserves congratulations on working with the Tegu till it came out right.

Thank you Jim, you've got to be PITA to work with them

Thank you again for your time to organize this.

another_jim wrote:In particular, you probably want lots of moisture and green tastes to remain well into the first crack as a buffer for the coming heat.

farmroast wrote:I have a couple friends who like me to dark roast for them and this is what I do.

This is good information and something I am going to try for my dark roasts which I did not have good luck with.

July 16th, 2012, 12:14 am

Donald Kuo PMed me. He doesn't speak English, but is a registered lurker via google translate. He asked me to convey that he is grateful to the information here.

There are several people here who have a similar relation to the Taiwanese and other foreign language coffee boards. I hope the translation software gets good enough to allow a somewhat closer relation among these fora. There is a lot of good stuff on Chinese, German, French boards and probably on boards in other languages I don't even suspect.

#118: Post by **chang00** » July 16th, 2012, 1:01 am

You want to forward Donald's message and let me translate? I should be more understandable than google.

July 16th, 2012, 1:46 am

Thanks, his message was as short as my cite of it.

I don't know if the PM system supports Chinese character sets. It would be nice if we had volunteers to translate posts by non-anglophone members. I could do English/German. If we had people for the other main languages, we could set up as private forum where foreign language posts would go prior to their being translated and posted to the intended topics. I'll check with Dan to see if its doable and post a topic in news if it is.

#120: Post by **endlesscycles** » July 16th, 2012, 9:58 am

Thank you judges for taking the time to accommodate this competition once again. It was a pleasure to participate. I've been lurking the competition for the previous two years, and finally took the opportunity to participate. While I am a professional roaster, I feel more akin to the HomeRoaster in that I am experimentally inclined and driven to get the best cup, according to me, any way possible.

Here's my profiles for the 6th place closed and 2nd place open espresso:

Closed Spro: Rwanda Jomba Vunga
9min, 392 first, 12min, 410 finish

This was my first roast of this coffee, so I had no idea what to expect... I just went with a profile I thought would get a decent spectrum of flavor from a somewhat unknown coffee. I had bought a bag of Wrecking Ball Vunga a month ago, ran it as an espresso and thought it was nice, hence my selection of this over the others. Also, I've been buying a lot of Rwanda's this year, so I thought I'd have a better shot given I only bought enough for one roast in each of the closed sections. Had I to do it again, I think I would have gotten to first a little quicker to reduce the savoriness (maybe?), and maybe moved quicker and further along after to get a broader spectrum of notes.

Open Spro: Ethiopia Kochere Teklu Dembel
8:30min, 392 first, 11:30min 400 finish

I've never roasted this light for spro before, but wanted to highlight all the exotic flavors and aromas this coffee had to offer. I was happy with the results, and so I'm thrilled to have done well in the finals. It was a specific challenge I wanted to rise to in this event, to figure out how to select and roast a single origin espresso. I think I've gotten a glimpse into the art, but maybe only enough to know getting a SO to shine is not easy and depends a lot on having a great coffee to begin with.