To put it mildly, the last two-months have brought about the most-intense bursts of advances in my roasting knowledge in my career - more than the last two-years. I'd attribute this to the ongoing conversation about development and the relation to solubility among roasters and professionals, and in particular working with my own coffees on bar at my new shop. Essentially, I moved my roasting style away from a hybrid Diedrich-style (moderate charge, long dry, hard ramp) to a modified Scandinavian style incorporating some elements of Rao's commandments with a few of my own discoveries that only apply to fluid bed roasting - this has led to my coffees becoming more developed on the interior, with greater origin character, less bake-flavor, and crucially, greater performance as espresso!

Two weeks ago, Matt Perger dropped his "Let's Talk About Roasting" article, which I suspect will have long-term ramifications for roasters all over the world. (Here: http://baristahustle.com/lets-talk-about-roasting/). Of course he bemoaned something I've been calling Third Wave-itis: underdeveloped light roasts. He had these points in particular:

Underdeveloped coffees behave in a very particular way:
- If you find yourself grinding one coffee significantly finer than another, even though the colour is similar, that coffee is likely underdeveloped.
- If you struggle to slow down espresso shots with a certain coffee but not others, look to development as the cause.
- If you can't crack open a roasted bean easily with your fingers, it's likely underdeveloped
- Break open a bean and look closely at the colour of the outside and inside layers of the bean. If there's a difference in colour that you can perceive, the inside is definitely underdeveloped.

The first two were revelatory for me, as although I'd considered my coffees to be better developed, I was indeed having those problems. The third point became important for me as well, as I started pinching beans post-roast whenever testing new profiles to determine their development.

However - I've had a Scandinavian-roasted coffee recently that made me reject this as a test. Tim Wendelboe's Kenya Kapsikoso is hard-enough that it didn't crack until I leaned on it with my tamper, and it is by-far the most delicious light roast coffee I've ever had. Everyone who has come into the bar has agreed, roasters or not, that it's incredibly rich, complex, and sweet. But brewing it - that's a different story. It needs some beating-up to really shine, meaning if I'm using it on a Kalita with a standard grind ('13' - '14' on a Mahlkonig Guat), I'm brewing it at 209 and "heavily" agitating it during the brew. There's no way in hell it performs this well as espresso - although in fairness I haven't even tried, as it was ~$53 to get 500g over here.

Is this an anomaly? Can harder, lighter, denser beans (to be fair, this is a high-grown Kenya SL-28) roasted in a Scandinavian approach actually be "developed" while displaying multiple characteristics of classically underdeveloped coffees?

compellingrich wrote:However - I've had a Scandinavian-roasted coffee recently that made me reject this as a test. Tim Wendelboe's Kenya Kapsikoso is hard-enough that it didn't crack until I leaned on it with my tamper, and it is by-far the most delicious light roast coffee I've ever had. Everyone who has come into the bar has agreed, roasters or not, that it's incredibly rich, complex, and sweet. But brewing it - that's a different story. It needs some beating-up to really shine, meaning if I'm using it on a Kalita with a standard grind ('13' - '14' on a Mahlkonig Guat), I'm brewing it at 209 and "heavily" agitating it during the brew. There's no way in hell it performs this well as espresso - although in fairness I haven't even tried, as it was ~$53 to get 500g over here.

Is this an anomaly? Can harder, lighter, denser beans (to be fair, this is a high-grown Kenya SL-28) roasted in a Scandinavian approach actually be "developed" while displaying multiple characteristics of classically underdeveloped coffees?

I've tried that Kapsokisio as well. I only got to try it twice because it wasn't my coffee. In any case, it wound up tasting far from ideal. There weren't generic underdeveloped flavors - and I would be shocked if TW put out a roast like that - but there were some flavors that seemed off - chlorine, grass, algae. I did grind a bit finer and brew a bit hotter. I was on a V60 rather than a Wave and couldn't get water hotter than 202 F in the kettle based on the hot water tap I was using. It's frustrating to hear that it could've likely been tasty if I pushed it harder, but again, I couldn't really brew up more than a couple cups.

I think it's important to remember that lots of types of approaches are Nordic. Some Nords apply lots of heat early and roast super fast - much like American ultra-light roasters. Some drag the roast out and have a more linear approach - and Tim Wendelboe seems to take that approach for his brew roasts. I don't think that his approach is very good for solubility. (Well, actually, it's really bad for solubility.) So you have awesome coffee with zero roast character, but you're forcing your customer to do a lot of work or end up with a grassy cup. And most of them won't get aggressive and will simply drink aggressively bright, savory, unsweet cups. That doesn't seem ideal. I think maybe it's a viable approach if you separate your brew roasts and attach a bunch of disclaimers. And yet some of the best cups I've had have been from linear or "concave" roasts. It's a tough thing to figure out, and it's even tougher if you're trying to sell coffee commercially.

By the way, check out this presentation for some example Nordic profiles, toward the end of the document, if you haven't already: http://nordicbaristacup.com/wp-content/ ... opster.pdf