All the meat for me started at 14:50, unless you really enjoy watching other people cup coffee
With all the talk here of Rao and the ever decreasing RoR, it was interesting to hear them talk about "the high heat finish"...
"curve... level out and ramp it up right at the end... last 15-30 seconds... just ramp it up. You'll get some sweetness coming through there then."

Anyone have experience with intentional blipping at the end? They say it can increase sweetness. Everyone else I've heard publicly seems to think it would cause a baked flavor. Thoughts?

cimarronEric wrote:
With all the talk here of Rao and the ever decreasing RoR, it was interesting to hear them talk about "the high heat finish"...
"curve... level out and ramp it up right at the end... last 15-30 seconds... just ramp it up. You'll get some sweetness coming through there then."

Anyone have experience with intentional blipping at the end? They say it can increase sweetness. Everyone else I've heard publicly seems to think it would cause a baked flavor. Thoughts?

Thanks for sharing the video. I'm planning on swinging by Demitasse while I'm down here in LA with family for the holidays. As to the tail end comment, I wouldn't focus too much on it. Everyone has an opinion, and ultimately some of thee discussions can end up turning into a "how many angels on a head of a pin" sort of thing. But as caramelization continues, sugar degrades into less sweet components, that's a fact. Whether there was something particular to this coffee that altered the perception of sweetness thru the finish, maybe by the maillard reactions resulting in something pleasant, or breakdown of acids that would be perceived as less pleasant, leaving the sweetness to stand out better, that's up to this particular coffee and not a universal constant.

I transitioned out of the head roaster role at Demi when Andy came on board with a lot more experience. As we shifted our profiles over to his roasting style I watched the implementation of this high heat finish, how it effected our existing profiles, and how the new profiles took shape. We (I) roasted on rather extreme "high heal" profiles with longer flat-ish finishes inherited from Greg at Trystero. The high heat finish (which was just enough to start pushing the RoR up at the end seemed to improve the sweetness of our otherwise aggressively light roasts. It seemed to bring more balance to our beans (that's not always what I'm looking in a roast, but that's a different issue). I don't think it would do anything for longer and darker roasts

My take on it is the short heat spike is a finesse move and has to be done with a lot of care. 15 seconds seems well worth trying. A 30 second heat spike would make for a pretty big difference in finish temp- 10F? Seems like a lot.

Wondering why they felt it necessary to vlog the entire cupping process, without little commentary during the process. Nonetheless thanks for sharing.

I live within walking distance and will be checking out their new roasts in light of this thread.

The guys doing the cupping did their sampling and note-taking in silence- about 2/3 of that was edited out. The process of how to do a cupping wasn't the subject of the event- it was just a means to an end. The event was about learning how to improve our roasting knowledge by receiving feedback from cuppers and roasters with lots of experience. I can see (now...) that we could've got even more good feedback by getting the commentary in real time as well as the run down at the end. Next time!

GregR wrote:My take on it is the short heat spike is a finesse move and has to be done with a lot of care. 15 seconds seems well worth trying. A 30 second heat spike would make for a pretty big difference in finish temp- 10F? Seems like a lot.

It's all about context. With a soft push into 1C, a heat spike at the end didn't dramatically change the roast level. Our roasts were (are still, I guess) light enough that it didn't impart any additional unwanted roast flavors.

If you think about the area under your curve as heat imparted to the bean mass (which it isn't, this is just an explanation), a curve with a steady post-1C RoR to a +10 degree finish contains more heat than one with a sudden rapid upswing to the same +10 degree finish.

I'll be trying it next time I roast. And tomorrow morning I'll be trying the Uganda and Kenya roasts I just got in the mail from you.

So I interpret this to mean that the little 'kiss' does not significantly change the BT since it takes time for the bean mass to absorb the higher heat. I guess this would vary with your batch size. But anyway, the real question is how does this explain why the end result is a sweeter cup. I assume some of us are going to give this at try and report back (me being one of them).

The cupping bit was a bit "longish", but (even though it was edited) it was needed to grasp the full context. In the beginning they tell you that it's from a Huky roasting competition, which I recon they sponsored. (There's a thread over at that forum... which I havn't read, as I live in Sweden and thought it wasn't relevant to me. I will look through that thread, as there is probably a lot of info on this subject over there...)
But, it's all about roasting on a Huky500, a roaster which they (Demitasse) use as a sample roaster. Now, I recon most of you know that the Huky comes in two configs. Either Solid or Perforated drum. I roasted on a solid drum for about 11 months and just recently switched to a perforated drum setup. Now, all of my Artisan graphs with the solid drum showed the same thing at the end: The BT (and corresponding RoR/DeltaBT) dropped through the floor during the last 10-15 sec or so of the roast. That came without changing anything at all. (I have dual fans/sieves etc. so there's no need for rebuilding the machine before drop.) A steady low heat and a steady fan. That drop of especially RoR showed up on most/all of my roasts with the solid drum.
With the perforated drum the RoR (and BT) shoots up at the end of the roast. The only hardware difference is the drum (and the grate which comes with that drum). No changes to heat/fan, I just open the door at e.g. 10.00 minutes and the BT/RoR shoots up from 9.45 or so.

Listening to the video got me thinking about what would happen (logically)... Maybe the added heat they suggest burns off a touch of volatile acidity, which in turns promotes a sweetness which is already there, but just subdued by that acidity. Anyhow, I think that probably is roaster-dependent. After all, the very context of the cupping was a Huky contest.